From Land to Mouth: The Agricultural "Economy" of the Wola of the New Guinea Highlands [Har/Dvdr ed.] 9780300142266, 0300142269

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Yale Agrarian Studies Series J A M ES C. SCOT T, Series Editor

The Agrarian Studies Series at Yale University Press seeks to publish outstanding and original interdisciplinary work on agriculture and rural society—for any period, in any location. Works of daring that question existing paradigms and fill abstract categories with the lived-experience of rural people are especially encouraged. —James C. Scott, Series Editor James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed Deborah Fitzgerald, Every Farm a Factory: The Industrial Ideal in American Agriculture Stephen B. Brush, Farmers’ Bounty: Locating Crop Diversity in the Contemporary World Brian Donahue, The Great Meadow: Farmers and the Land in Colonial Concord J. Gary Taylor and Patricia J. Scharlin, Smart Alliance: How a Global Corporation and Environmental Activists Transformed a Tarnished Brand Michael Goldman, Imperial Nature: The World Bank and Struggles for Social Justice in the Age of Globalization Arvid Nelson, Cold War Ecology: Forests, Farms, and People in the East German Landscape, 1945–1989 Steve Striffler, Chicken: The Dangerous Transformation of America’s Favorite Food Parker Shipton, The Nature of Entrustment: Intimacy, Exchange, and the Sacred in Africa Alissa Hamilton, Squeezed: What You Don’t Know About Orange Juice Parker Shipton, Mortgaging the Ancestors: Ideologies of Attachment in Africa Bill Winders, The Politics of Food Supply: U.S. Agricultural Policy in the World Economy James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia Stephen K. Wegren, Land Reform in Russia: Institutional Design and Behavioral Responses Benjamin R. Cohen, Notes from the Ground: Science, Soil, and Society in the American Countryside Paul Sillitoe: From Land to Mouth: The Agricultural “Economy” of the Wola of the New Guinea Highlands

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From Land to Mouth The Agricultural “Economy” of the Wola of the New Guinea Highlands

Paul Sillitoe

N EW H AV E N & LO N D O N

Copyright © 2010 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected] (U.S. office) or [email protected] (U.K. office). Set in Ehrhardt and The Sans types by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sillitoe, Paul, 1949– From land to mouth : the agricultural “economy” of the Wola of the New Guinea highlands / Paul Sillitoe. p. cm. — (Yale agrarian studies series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-300-14226-6 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Agriculture—Economic aspects—Papua New Guinea. 2. Wola (Papua New Guinean people)— Economic conditions. I. Title. II. Title: Agricultural “economy” of the Wola of the New Guinea highlands. III. Series: Yale agrarian studies. HD2196.5.S55 2010 338.1089'9912—dc22 2010013155 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). 10

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FOR J again, as always And Mum and Dad

We live from hand to mouth, most of us, with a small family of immediate desires. —GEORGE ELIOT, THE MILL ON THE FLOSS

Väinämöinen, old and steadfast, Ground his axe-blade to sharpness And began to fell the forest, Toiling hard to clear the country . . . Then the bird of the air struck fire, And the flames rose up in brightness, While the north wind fanned the forest, And the north-east wind blew fiercely. All the trees were burned to ashes, Till the sparks were quite extinguished. Then the aged Väinämöinen Took the six seeds from his satchel, And he took the seven small kernels . . . Then he went to sow the country, And to scatter seeds around him . . . Make the blade arise and flourish, Let the stalks grow up and lengthen, That the ears might grow by thousands, Yet a hundredfold increasing, By my ploughing and sowing, In return for all my labour. —FROM THE RUNO ON SHIFTING CULTIVATION IN THE FINNISH EPIC POEM KALEVALA: THE LAND OF HEROES

Contents

List of Illustrations

viii

Preface xvii

CHAPTER CHAPTER CHAPTER CHAPTER CHAPTER CHAPTER CHAPTER CHAPTER CHAPTER CHAPTER CHAPTER CHAPTER CHAPTER

1 The Agricultural “Economy” 1 2 Economics and the Self-Interested Individual 26 3 Community and the Other-Interested Individual 56 4 Land Tenure and the Collective-Interests Individual 85 5 Selection of Cultivation Sites and Individual Choice 126 6 The Land Issue: Scarce Resource? 169 7 The Population Issue: Too Many People? 216 8 Pioneering Gardens: Men’s Labor 253 9 Cultivating Gardens: Women’s Labor 295 10 The Labor Question: Scarcity of Time? 330 11 Exchange: Taro Gardens 376 12 The Exchange Economy? 417 13 No Economy, No Development? 454

Appendices 1–3 483 Notes 487 References Index 561

529

Illustrations

Maps 1.1. 6.1. 6.2.

New Guinea: Wola region and neighbors 20 Vegetation cover of Wola region 177 Series of maps showing gardens and houses in part of Was Valley

180

Figures 1.1. 1.2. 1.3. 1.4. 1.5. 1.6. 1.7. 1.8. 2.1. 2.2. 2.3. 2.4. 2.5. 3.1. 3.2. 3.3.

Sweet potato garden with clumps of sugarcane 17 Taro garden 17 Small mixed-vegetable garden 17 Garden area under coarse grass fallow 18 Looking northward up the Was Valley 21 View across the Was Valley looking northwestward with a sweet potato garden in the foreground 21 Ridge under montane rain forest 22 Homestead on a knoll surrounded by dense cane grass 23 Sa longhouse 31 Constructing a vine suspension bridge across the Was River 31 Late afternoon, and a woman has tethered her pigs along the fence adjacent to her house 43 At a pig kill at Ungubiy, men remove hot stones from earth oven 43 Cutting up cooked pork at pig kill prior to distribution 43 Individual and cooperative behavior grid 59 A man argues his point during a dispute 73 Threatening violence, men wave axes and bows in a show of aggression 76

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 3.4. 3.5. 4.1. 4.2. 4.3. 4.4. 4.5. 4.6. 4.7. 4.8. 4.9. 4.10. 4.11. 4.12. 4.13. 4.14. 4.15. 4.16. 4.17. 4.18. 4.19. 4.20. 4.21. 4.22. 4.23. 5.1. 5.2. 5.3. 5.4. 5.5. 5.6. 5.7. 5.8. 5.9. 5.10.

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Walking aid devised by a man with a leg wound caused by an arrow during armed hostilities 77 Discussing an ol gwat (mortuary exchange), with wealth displayed along fence 81 Schematic genealogy illustrating land tenure principles 90 Cordyline shrubs mark an old fence line 97 Genealogy of disputants in case 1 99 Mayka Sal 100 Genealogy of disputants in case 2 102 Mayka Muwlib 103 Wenja Waenil 103 Genealogy of disputants in case 3 104 Huwlael Em 105 Maenget Tensgay 105 Genealogy of disputants in case 4 106 Mayka Pes 107 Wol Saembuwt 107 Garden area disputed by Pes and Saembuwt at the mokombai (regrowth) stage 107 Land tenure relationships at Ganonkiyba site 108 Wenja Oliyn 108 Wenja Unguwdiyp 108 Wenja Neleb 109 View of the Ganonkiyba garden during fencing 109 Schematic genealogy after gardeners’ land rights 113 Schematic genealogy showing occurrence of males and females in land tenure kin equations 114 Schematic genealogy showing occurrence of collateral connections in land tenure kin equations 115 Land tenure compared with social status 120 Distance from homesteads to gardens 130 Distance to gardens compared with social status 137 Distance to gardens compared with age 138 Fence with beading attached, dense cane grassland behind 140 Enclosure with natural features, a rock overhang that also serves as a shelter and cooking place 140 Enclosure of gardens compared with social status 145 Aspects of gardens 146 Aspect: looking out from sweet potato garden 147 Slopes of gardens 149 Slope: a steeply sloping sweet potato garden 150

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

5.11. 5.12. 5.13. 5.14. 5.15. 5.16. 5.17. 5.18. 5.19. 5.20. 5.21. 6.1. 6.2. 6.3. 6.4. 6.5. 6.6. 6.7. 6.8. 6.9. 7.1. 7.2. 7.3. 7.4. 7.5. 7.6. 7.7. 7.8. 7.9. 7.10. 7.11. 7.12. 7.13. 7.14.

Configuration of garden slopes 152 Configuration: a sweet potato garden on even slope 153 Configuration: a sweet potato garden on convex slope 153 Altitude of gardens 154 Altitude: a forested ridge high on the Was Valley watershed at Ebera 154 Aspects of gardens compared with social status 156 Slopes of gardens compared with social status 157 Vegetation: ridge under secondary forest at Saela 159 Vegetation: swamp grasses and cane at Pa, a waterlogged location suitable for taro 159 Vegetation cover of garden sites 161 Garden site vegetation cover compared with social status 162 Aerial photograph of Was Valley taken at time of first garden survey 179 Feeding sweet potato tubers to a pig stalled in a woman’s house 196 Garden mosaic showing different stages of cultivation from newly planted to grassy fallow 200 Newly planted (waeniy) stage of sweet potato garden 201 Garden in the puw (mature) stage, with a woman harvesting tubers 201 Sweet potato garden under mokombai grassy fallow 201 Logs and rows of sugarcane mark women’s boundaries (tenon tomb) in a newly cleared garden 210 Exposed grave under rock overhang 213 A howma communal clearing with defensive fence and dense cane vegetation 213 Pigs staked out in a line during an exchange display 218 Nuclear family group: Muwiy and Pabiym with their children 219 Census populations 221 Population pyramids 222 Sitting outside an enza (men’s house) 226 Coaxing a pig into a tenda (women’s house) 226 Small puliym aenda (menstrual hut) in the Nembi Valley 226 Marital status compared with number of children 227 A woman stops while harvesting sweet potato tubers to breast-feed her child 228 Polygynously married women: number of co-wives compared with number of children 230 Polygynously married women: marriage order compared with number of children 231 At a funeral, women sit wailing around the corpse of a young man 233 Leda when a mature woman 235 Looking out from a garden over extensive rain forest 251

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 8.1. 8.2. 8.3. 8.4. 8.5. 8.6. 8.7. 8.8. 8.9. 8.10. 8.11. 8.12. 8.13. 8.14. 8.15. 8.16. 8.17. 8.18. 8.19. 8.20. 8.21. 8.22. 8.23. 8.24. 8.25. 9.1. 9.2. 9.3. 9.4. 9.5. 9.6. 9.7. 9.8. 9.9.

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Lashing dry pandan leaf bases around trunk of pandan nut tree to prevent rodent attack 255 Man fishing in small stream with string bag net 256 Freshly caught mountain cuscus 256 Site marked out at Ganonkiyba with vegetation communities 260 Genealogy of men working at Ganonkiyba 261 Felling tree with steel ax 264 Felling tree with stone ax 264 Slashing undergrowth down with bush knife 265 Cutting undergrowth with stone ax, using a pole to chop against 265 Relationships between men who worked together in clearing gardens and shared them 268 Social status of men compared with extent cooperated with or received help from others in clearing gardens 270 Different kinds of barrier erected by the Wola 272 Area enclosed at Ganonkiyba, showing extent of different barriers 276 Chopping a tree trunk in two 277 Driving in wedge to split tree trunk longitudinally 279 Splitting tree trunk in two using stone ax 279 Splitting tree trunk in two using steel ax 280 Trimming a fencing stake 281 Driving in fence stakes 283 Lashing a stringer sapling in place along the top edge of a fence 284 Digging a ditch with spades 286 Levering out a cane grass root clump 287 Pulling up the rootstocks of saplings 287 Genealogy showing relationships between persons who came to assist with rooting at Ganonkiyba 290 Pollarding branches off a tree 293 Breaking up and burning dry vegetation in recultivating a garden 297 Gardener heaping dry vegetation onto a large bonfire 300 Woman burning small vegetation 302 View across the Ganonkiyba garden during burning off 302 Genealogy showing relationships between persons who came to assist with planting at Ganonkiyba 304 Woman transporting a pile of sweet potato cuttings on her head to a new garden 306 View across the Ganonkiyba garden during planting, with the burning of some small refuse 306 Driving in sharpened pole to plant sweet potato (suwl method) 308 Heaping up sweet potato mound 309

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

9.10. 9.11. 9.12. 9.13. 9.14. 10.1. 10.2. 10.3. 10.4. 10.5. 10.6. 10.7. 10.8. 10.9. 10.10. 10.11. 10.12. 10.13. 10.14. 10.15. 10.16. 10.17. 10.18. 10.19. 10.20. 10.21. 11.1. 11.2. 11.3. 11.4. 11.5. 11.6. 11.7. 11.8. 11.9. 11.10. 11.11.

Planting sweet potato cuttings in earth mound 309 Distribution of crops in Ganonkiyba garden 311 Harvesting sweet potato tubers 315 Binding a stone ax blade in place on haft 326 Honing the cutting edge of a steel ax 327 Phases of the moon 338 Woman returning from a garden on a drizzly afternoon with a net bag of sweet potato tubers under her rain cape 347 Woman attaching a tether to a pig’s front trotter 348 Returning home of an evening with a load of firewood 348 Women and children sitting and talking at an exchange event 348 Men spend much time walking: returning from a pig kill with a joint of pork comprising rib cage and spine 349 Using tongs to put hot stones into a banana leaf–lined earth oven pit to cook vegetables 349 Loading an earth oven pit with vegetables 350 Chopping up firewood 350 Men’s daytime activities 351 Women’s daytime activities 351 House construction: lashing rafters in place 355 Parents often leave small children in the care of older siblings 359 Men resting while engaged in corvée kongon labor on track 360 Men inspecting wealth lined up for an exchange transaction 362 Woman resting with child, stroking pig 370 Loading an earth oven with segments of pandan nut clusters 370 Woman collecting earth oven–cooked pandan nut clusters 371 Winding a hank of string 371 Netting a string bag 372 Men and women sit discussing a dispute, after attending church 372 Taro plant (Colocasia esculenta) 378 Scraping base of taro cutting while muttering spell 382 Firming soil around taro cutting with planting club 382 Singeing fur off mountain cuscus, inviting ancestor spirits to “eat” it 393 Holding the charred, furless body of mountain cuscus following garden rite 393 Arranging heaps of taro plants for exchange 400 Taro plants lined up for exchange 400 Cutting tops (planting stock) off taro corms following exchange 401 Preparing pandan nut clusters for an exchange 411 Cassowary (Casuarius bennetti ) 411 Painting red ochre onto the center of a nassa-shell forehead band 412

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 11.12. 12.1. 12.2. 12.3. 12.4. 12.5. 12.6. 12.7. 13.1. 13.2. 13.3.

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Man with an ornamental stone ax stuck in his girdle 412 Butchering a pig, one first cuts along the belly 427 Two young men arriving from Kutubu with a bamboo tube of cosmetic oil 429 Leading two large pigs on tethers 431 Binding possum teeth onto beard pin 432 Pair of possum-teeth beard pins 432 Holding an enameled bird of paradise plume headdress at a dance 433 Public hentiya exchange to settle pig-herding arrangements 439 Saturday market at Nipa patrol post 461 Presenting a pearl shell during a mortuary exchange 478 Hypothetical supply and demand schedules 479 Tables

4.1. 4.2. 4.3. 5.1. 5.2. 5.3. 5.4. 5.5. 5.6. 5.7. 5.8. 5.9. 6.1. 6.2. 6.3. 6.4. 6.5. 6.6.

Definitions of land rights 89 Land tenure compared with garden type 92 Disputes over land rights 110 Distance of gardens from homesteads according to different cultivations 132 Numbers of gardens and areas enclosed, partially enclosed, and not enclosed by human-made barriers 141 Estimated garden perimeters enclosed in different ways 142 Enclosure according to different types of gardens 143 Aspects of taro gardens 147 Site aspect compared with slope 148 Slope of different types of gardens 150 Comparison of sweet potato gardens with southerly to westerly facing aspects with gardeners’ ages 158 Gardens with southerly to westerly facing aspects according to land tenure 159 Number of gardens and areas under cultivation 176 Average number of gardens and areas under cultivation, by gardeners’ social status 188 Local assessment of garden sizes compared with men’s social status 190 Garden type and number of times cultivated, by men’s social status 192 Average number of gardens and areas under cultivation, by gardeners’ ages 194 Average family size and number of women working gardens, by men’s ages 195

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6.7. 6.8. 6.9. 6.10. 6.11. 6.12. 6.13. 7.1. 7.2. 7.3. 7.4. 7.5. 7.6. 7.7. 7.8. 7.9. 8.1. 8.2. 8.3. 8.4. 8.5. 8.6. 8.7. 8.8. 8.9. 8.10. 8.11. 8.12. 8.13. 8.14. 8.15. 9.1.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Average family size and number of women working gardens, by men’s social status 195 Average size of pig herds, by men’s social status 196 Population at time of garden surveys 197 Pig populations at time of garden surveys 197 Number of gardens and areas under cultivation according to garden type and cultivation status 202 Area under cultivation per head by households 205 Relationship of women to male pioneers of gardens in which they have areas to cultivate 208 Birthrate statistics 223 Changes in house types occupied by males 225 Mean number of children fathered per wife by men according to marital status 232 Death-rate statistics 233 Marital status and number of children of those whose deaths were attributed to famine 236 Comparison of children born to widows and nonwidows (post menopause) 240 Migration statistics 240 Further migration statistics 241 Average annual percent rate of population increase (r) and time to double population size (t) 243 Proportion of time spent on various tasks clearing Ganonkiyba site 262 Average work rates per hour clearing garden 263 Work completed in clearance of garden site 266 Labor and tenure arrangements in clearing gardens 267 Average lengths of enclosure erected in one hour’s work 274 Work completed in splitting fence stakes 277 Proportion of time spent on various tasks splitting fence stakes 278 Proportion of time spent on various tasks sharpening fence stakes 282 Average number of fence stakes produced in one hour’s work 282 Work put into erecting fence around Ganonkiyba garden 282 Proportion of time spent on various tasks erecting fence and ditch barriers 284 Work involved digging ditch around Ganonkiyba garden 285 Proportion of time spent on various tasks removing stumps and roots 288 Work put into removing stumps and roots from Ganonkiyba garden 289 Proportion of time spent on various tasks cutting down shade in and around Ganonkiyba garden 292 Work involved in clearing herbaceous and grassy regrowth 297

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 9.2. 9.3. 9.4. 9.5. 9.6. 9.7. 9.8. 9.9. 9.10. 9.11. 9.12. 10.1. 10.2. 10.3. 10.4. 11.1. 11.2. 11.3. 11.4.

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Work put into burning off in Ganonkiyba garden 300 Proportion of time spent on various tasks burning cut vegetation from Ganonkiyba garden 301 Proportion of time spent on various tasks planting Ganonkiyba garden 303 Planting materials collected to stock Ganonkiyba garden 307 Proportion of time spent tilling, building, and planting mounds 309 Work put into weeding a garden 314 Harvesting labor 316 Time spent cultivating gardens 317 Crop yields from Ganonkiyba garden 320 Time spent attending to axes 326 Distribution of cultivation tasks by gender 328 Time spent on cultivation work 332 Time spent on all activities 342 Percentage of time that men spent on different activities according to status and age 357 Percentage of time that women spent on different activities according to status and age 358 Distribution of taro to relatives in corm exchanges 402 Number of taro gardens and areas under cultivation, by gardeners’ status 404 Number of taro gardens and areas under cultivation, by gardeners’ ages 404 Things transacted in the Was Valley 410

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Preface

T

he first law of economics is that for every economist there is an equal and opposite economist,” runs a Christmas cracker joke, and “the second law is that they are both invariably wrong!” This satire plays on the widespread impression that there are no definitive answers to many economic questions, an impression reinforced by the recent banking and stock market turmoil. It reflects experience of a particular sort of economy, namely, the capitalist market one. It takes little imagination to realize how the problems grow exponentially when we consider other kinds of “economies,” such that much debate in economic anthropology, which considers these other cultural arrangements, is about the applicability or otherwise of assumptions about economic behavior derived from experience of the market economy, and even the relevance of the category of economy. An economy basically involves the production of things, both tangible and intangible, their distribution between people, and finally their consumption or use. This tripartite arrangement seems straightforward enough. All cultures, including those of the New Guinea Highlands, the subject of this book, have an economy in this sense—by definition, as human beings everywhere have to produce and consume things to survive. The complication is that their economies are organized in a wide variety of ways to achieve these apparently straightforward ends. And there is no agreed global theory to make sense of these varied economic orders; indeed, some argue that such a prospect is a chimera. While we have capitalist economics to further some understanding of the market economy, we have no anthropological economics in the sense of a set of integrated principles by which to make sense of nonmarket arrangements. In this book I set out to pinpoint these principles for a valley in the New Guinea Highlands and explore how they “

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might articulate one with another. A key difference, I think, between this “economy” and the capitalist one is that it occurs in a culture that values equality highly, where all are equally rich “winners” (or poor “losers,” depending on your view), whereas the market economy esteems inequality, characterized by winners and losers, rich and poor. In this respect they are fundamentally opposed political-economic orders, and we might anticipate that ideas drawn from one may not necessarily help us understand the other. This book adopts the widely accepted definition of economics as concerning the allocation of resources to satisfy people’s demands for goods and services. In this view, economics focuses on the efficient use of available factors of production (raw materials, capital, and labor) and the cost-effective distribution of resulting products to meet these demands. It assumes that wants are virtually infinite, whereas available resources are finite and consequently scarce. This study draws on the other “eco” (from the Greek oikos, “house”) discipline—namely, ecology—to investigate the relevance of the resource scarcity proposition to the Was Valley. It focuses particularly on the sustainability of human activities with respect to the exploitation of natural resources and their impact on the local ecology—understood to encompass the relation of living organisms, including humans, to their surroundings, notably how animal and plant populations interact and influence one another and their physical environments. According to economists, given the scarcity of resources relative to demand, individuals have constantly to make choices and in so doing seek to gain the maximum satisfaction of their wants. In engaging in such economizing behavior, profit-motivated calculations inform their decisions. And in the capitalist system, it is the operation of the market that allocates resources (with varying degrees of state intervention). It is this formal economic formulation that this book seeks to contrast with arrangements in the New Guinea Highlands. The middle stage in the tripartite organization described above for any economy is key to understanding aspects of “economic” arrangements in the Was Valley. Distribution—or rather exchange, as we call it in the tribal world—is central to the politicaleconomic order. It presumably relates to the “economy” in some way as it involves material things that have to be produced and so results in certain economic behavior. There are further parallels with Western ideas of economy. There is, analogous to Adam Smith’s hidden hand of the market, the hidden hand of exchange, many individually motivated acts having collective consequences, albeit embedded in egalitarian circumstances that condition expectations in profoundly different ways to hierarchical capitalist ones. The result is not a gift economy, a category that some use to contrast such orders with commodity distribution, because formal exchanges do not feature gifts. Transactions are neither gifts nor purchases. Ceremonial exchange is another term for the transactions that occur in this part of the world, but they do not necessarily feature much ceremony either. I prefer the term sociopolitical exchange. This is an example of the sort of terminological and conceptual struggle that characterizes attempts to understand “economic” arrangements in the New Guinea Highlands.

PREFACE

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It has taken several books to arrive at the point where I think I can tackle the issues discussed in this one. While these previous works have all built toward this book, dealing with aspects of production, exchange, and consumption, on occasion I have doubted that I was studying an “economy” at all, rather than a subsistence farming regime embedded within an intriguing stateless tribal polity. So, when is an “economy” not an economy? Perhaps it is when people’s material concerns feature no economizing behavior and no calculations of profit inform related decisions. In this event, do they have no awareness of economic issues or do these inform other aspects of their behavior, occurring in other domains of life than those that concern the “economy”? Such questions challenge the appropriateness of the idea “economy” in tribal contexts, as recently we have questioned the relevance of “society” and for many years have queried that of “government.” These questions are a feature of our stumbling but growing awareness of sociopolitical arrangements in stateless orders, as we seek to modify those concepts that feature in our understanding of state orders, which we have initially applied elsewhere, lacking other categories by which to see the world. One problem is the need to write in English, the language of a culture that has formulated formal economics and is therefore inevitably tainted by association with capitalist ideas. I have felt somewhat like the proverbial elephant’s flea who has grown up living on the trunk and been taught an explanation of the world that involves eating food, moving forward, and seeing the knees of the front two legs, then finds himself transported to the opposite, tail end of his world, where everything is the reverse and involves defecating waste, apparently moving backward, and seeing the calf muscles of the rear two legs, and I am struggling to adapt my trunk theory to fit my tail observations. This book is an account of that struggle. It is with pleasure that I find myself closing these prefatory remarks by acknowledging the help that I have received on my long economic odyssey. My many friends living in the Was River region have given so generously of their time and wisdom. I thank those who cooperated with my census surveys of their homesteads and allowed me to survey their gardens. In particular there are my stalwart friends Wenja Neleb, Maenget Saendaep, Ind Kuwliy, and Wenja Muwiy, who have so willingly cooperated with me throughout, and without whose assistance much of my work would not have been possible. There are also Mayka Sal and Mayka Haebay, and I should like to remember Maenget Kem and Mayka Kot, too, such good friends no longer with us. Many other men and women, of all ages, living in the Was Valley, have helped me in various ways. Several cooperated with me in conducting a survey of how they spent their time, and I list them at the appropriate place by name, as I do others who have helped me in particular ways, for instance, permitting me to tape and transcribe incantations. As I have said before: Chay tenol hombun ora, niy onyi turiy biy. In the assistance that I have received from various colleagues over the years I have also been particularly fortunate. I have thanked many of them elsewhere for help with,

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for example, botanical, zoological, and pedological questions that have featured prominently in the other books that are forerunners to this one. I am particularly grateful to Robert Shiel of Newcastle University’s agriculture department for his unfailing support over the years, and to Roy Ellen of Kent University’s anthropology department for his encouragement. It is almost invidious to name colleagues who have worked in Papua New Guinea, as so many of them have contributed to sharpening my ideas in discussions, but I am particularly grateful to Tim Bayliss-Smith and Andrew Strathern for reading the manuscript of this book and making several constructive suggestions to improve it. Also, I count myself especially fortunate to have “locked tusks” with Ben Burt, James Carrier, Daryl Feil, Colin Filer, Laurence Goldman, Christin KocherSchmid, Pierre Lemonnier, Gilbert Lewis, Mike O’Hanlon, Buck Schieffelin, Marilyn Strathern, Stan Ulijaszek, and Mike Young. I may not agree with all of them but I value our dialogue. I thank David Wooff, Lynne Cresswell, and Hayley Beaumont of Durham University’s mathematics department for assistance with the statistical analyses featuring in this book, which involved use of the R statistical package. And for valuable help with the Geographical Information System (GIS) Wolaland Interactive that features in this book I thank Abram Pointet of the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Robin Wilson, a former Durham colleague, and staff in Durham’s design and imaging unit. For funding the development of the GIS I thank the British Academy (grant no. SG-32531) and the Leverhulme Trust (grant no. A20060240). The University of Durham elected me to its Society of Fellows, as a Sir James Knott Foundation Fellow, so allowing me to devote my time to this book free of teaching and administrative duties, a particularly welcome opportunity after an onerous period as head of department. And the Economic and Social Research Council awarded me a research fellowship (award no. RES-063-27-0105) that allowed me to bring the work to conclusion. I am deeply grateful for both. My anthropology colleagues here in Durham have, as always, been generous in their support. I also thank Jean Thomson Black of Yale University Press for her support and Robin DuBlanc for her suburb copyediting of the manuscript. In concluding this preface I have to thank those to whom my gratitude is simply inexpressible, my family—the “infrastructure” of my life, as all kinship-aware anthropologists appreciate—and especially my wife, Jackie, as always, for her help and support and sensible advice while I was engrossed in yet another book. Also, Mum and Dad and the boys.

CHAPTER 1

The Agricultural “Economy”

W

hen is enough enough? Never, according to the capitalist economic view, which assumes that human wants are insatiable. When we have a sufficient amount of something we seek another thing, and so on endlessly. Capitalism depicts us as essentially selfish creatures, or maximizing individuals out to get the best for ourselves, whose needs can never be met, for when we satisfy one need, we invent another to chase after. Scarcity is consequently an unavoidable fact of life for all (Lipsey and Harbury 1990, 6–7; Colman and Young 1990, 2). It is a persuasive argument with a relentless logic for those of us living in market societies with their twenty-first-century emphasis on consumerism. But other cultures apparently challenge it. Widely cited in the anthropological literature are some so-called hunter-gatherer populations, described tongue-in-cheek as “original affluent societies” (Sahlins 1972; Bird-David 1992; Gowdy 1998; Kaplan 2000; Solway 2006). According to some commentators, these groups subscribe to values that limit demand and, when it is met, prompt people to be content, the relative meagerness of their material possessions notwithstanding. They readily share what they have and apparently question the characterization of humans as insatiably greedy. We find examples of both points of view in the New Guinea Highlands. The Kapauku, according to Pospisil (1963a, 82, 401–4), experience scarcity and make economic calculations: Most of the floor of the Kamu Valley is either swampy grassland or is covered with reed growth. However, on the periphery, and especially around Botukebo, the ground is elevated and drier, offering good silt loam soils which had originally been covered with forest. Owing to the intensive cultivation this part of the floor of the Kamu was changed into grassland. . . . With the emphasis upon wealth, money,

2

THE AGRICULTURAL “ ECONOMY ” and trade Kapauku combine a strong version of individualism which, I daresay, could hardly be surpassed in our capitalistic society. . . . The individual differences in wealth and food consumption among the Kapauku are overwhelming. Kapauku individualism permits some natives, especially children from poor homes who are periodically starving, to develop severe symptoms of undernourishment, while individuals from prosperous households are well fed. . . . the Kapauku economic system possesses many other institutions and attributes that we usually associate with a capitalistic society. The people do extend credit, on some of which they charge interest. . . . Everything must ultimately be repaid upon the request of the donor or creditor. In this respect, again, their economy is even more extreme than Western capitalism. The Kapauku invest their money in other means of production to further the latter with the explicit purpose of maximising their profits . . . the forces of supply and demand definitely influence the prices which may fluctuate even 200 percent, certainly an extreme even in the capitalistic perspective.

The Maring, on the other hand, according to Clarke (1971, 165, 182, 191), are more reminiscent of the depiction of an affluent population with adequate resources to meet its needs and an absence of economic calculations: I think it essentially accurate to consider the basin to be a region where all necessary resources except water, fishing grounds, and certain high-elevation resources are evenly distributed—or at least are not concentrated in a particular place. The inhabitant’s choice of the specific place from which he extracts a resource or in which he uses it is, therefore, unrestrained by a zonation of resources. But, once he chooses a particular place to live or a particular plot to cultivate, he partially rigidifies his lines of activity. An obvious question follows: Are gardens and houses located on the basis of some economic principle? Certainly not . . . the BomagaiAngoiang say that no one ever goes hungry in the basin. On occasions they do say, “We have nothing to eat” or “Today I am going hungry.” What they mean, as I have noted, is that there is little “real food,” or tubers, available. However, there is usually plenty of other food, such as greens, Pandanus, pumpkin, sugar cane, or bananas. . . . Judged by its diversity, the ecosystem of the Ndwimba Basin is now in good health. Large amounts of lower montane rain forest are present, and it is a truism that tropical rain forests contain great diversity. . . . This layered, diverse plant cover efficiently appropriates solar energy, accumulates organic matter, and maintains soil fertility—all with little work by the few members of the human species that now inhabit the basin. The people and their environment are close to being in a state of internal equilibrium. These opposed positions reflect two extreme views of human nature—as either selfish, discontented, and self-interested or as generous, satisfied, and other-regarding— when we know that our behavior evidences a complex and often perplexing combination of all these drives. A more realistic view is to consider them together. But this is challenging, as we have to accommodate contradictions that threaten to undermine the assumed rational choices that inform human behavior. How can we be both selfish and

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generous in our dealings with others? We are clearly able to do this in our everyday lives, even if our economic models are unable to accommodate it. The Wola people of the New Guinea Highlands, who are sedentary cultivators and not “affluent hunter-gatherers,” appear, intriguingly, both to confirm and to challenge the capitalist view. They evidence endless demand for some things. They can never have enough wealth to transact in the exchange events that characterize their social life— occasions such as marriages and deaths, to which they accord great value. Today wealth comprises cash and pigs; previously it was composed of a range of things, including seashells, cosmetic oil, and salt. The change occurred when people’s capitalistic-like wish for more things came true with European penetration of the Highlands; the Europeans, realizing the value placed on seashells, flooded the region with them (notably with cowries and pearl-shells) to pay for local labor, leading to rampant inflation in transactions and the eventual devaluation of many traditional valuables. This appears to confirm the capitalist point about scarcity being a key feature of life. But with respect to subsistence and everyday necessities the Wola evidence more “original affluent” attitudes (Fisk 1962; Stent and Webb 1975). They appear broadly content with their standard of living, although market-led consumer demand is becoming increasingly evident with the arrival of cash and what it can buy; since the incursion of the outside world into their valleys, people have an increased array of goods to desire, such as manufactured clothes, processed food, and so on. But access to such goods remains currently limited, or is even declining, and the population continues to depend largely on subsistence activities, and associated values remain predominant. This book sets out to investigate the implications of this amalgamation of scarcity and adequacy attitudes. It is one of a series that seeks to understand life in Highland New Guinea. The work puzzles some, to judge from questions put to me occasionally asking what I think I am doing, the implication being that there is little or no evident connection between the books that I have written. They admittedly span a number of fields. These include environmental science and agriculture, covering ecology, nutrition, and ethnoscience (attempts to achieve an interdisciplinary focus spanning the social and natural sciences—Sillitoe 1983, 1996, 2003); sociocultural anthropology, notably exchange and transactional issues (part of a wave of studies that put exchange at the center of Highland social orders—Sillitoe 1979b); and even technology and material culture (at the time of distinctly marginal interest—Sillitoe 1988). I think that what prompts such queries is that I am not readily pigeonholed, as my work does not seek to further any particular ideology, be it “symbolic interpretivism,” “postmodernism,” “feminism,” “material dialectialism,” “post-structuralism,” or any other “ism.” This conveys to some an impression of eclectic aimlessness, exacerbated, I suspect, by my interest in some unfashionable fields, such as material culture (which has recently become increasingly acceptable, albeit my interests focus on technology rather than on popular structuralist-informed “consumerism” and the postmodern “narrative” biography of objects). The need to signal my true intentions prompted me to invent a label

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for what I think I am doing: “ethnographic-determinism” (Sillitoe 2003, 3).1 It encompasses a certain vision that has informed my work, a conviction that ethnographic evidence should feature at least as prominently as social philosophical debate. Although I have only recently coined the term, its stated assumptions inform all of my work.

Ethnographic-Determinism The assumptions of ethnographic-determinism are not new.2 It is amazing that they demand reaffirmation. The importance of ethnography has long been apparent; even the maligned armchair anthropologists were conscious of the need for accurate data, to judge from their extensive correspondence with those living among “savages.” The following comment by Frazer in a letter to Haddon on his initial Torres Straits work, which I found in the Cambridge University archives, is an early acknowledgement of “ethnographic-determinism”: “Allow me to congratulate you on the splendid results of your stay in Torres Straits . . . [they] form a most important contribution to anthropology. Indeed they are priceless, since the information they contain, if it had not been collected by you, would probably have entirely perished. . . . Work like yours will be remembered with gratitude long after the theories of the present (mine included) are forgotten or remembered only to be despised as obsolete and inadequate.”3 Interestingly, there is an honorary lecture in Frazer’s name but nothing in Haddon’s when, as he predicted, his work is now truly archaic, such that few of those who honor him have read it.4 This symbolizes the esteeming of Western intellectual constructs above local ethnographic sources, a position that ethnographic-determinism challenges. The principles of ethnographic-determinism are straightforward. They are a belief in the primacy of ethnography over “theory”—or, as I prefer, “ideology,” to signal the imposition of our views on others, often presented as issues thought to be of universal relevance. But ethnographic-determinism calls for more than a descriptive record of events, discussions, and observations. It advocates that we must allow problems to emerge from the ethnography.5 It requires more than interpretation of narratives about behavior, seeking issues that call for analysis and explanation. It is demanding because instead of allowing current ideological/theoretical preoccupations to structure inquiries, it expects the ethnography to receive close scrutiny in its own right. It also promotes the collection and documentation of ethnographic data for the record; the ethnography we deposit in the annals obviously being of paramount importance, as it constitutes the evidence against which our ideological formulations can be assessed now and in the future. Ethnographic-determinism seeks to promote the putting of sufficient data on record for others to take forward understanding of human sociocultural arrangements, farming systems, and so on, in all their wonderful variety, when certain issues are better understood. It attempts to sample several witnesses and a range of views; for example, this study depends on data collected from all gardeners living in part of the Was Valley. This sampling stipulation relates to urgent demands to extend beyond normative

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approaches. All persons have somewhat different views that we should try to represent and not suppress with a homogenous fiction; it requires collecting and documenting data from a range of individuals and situations. In this respect there are two strands to ethnographic-determinism: the collection of data on people’s behavior, which we can subject to rigorous review for patterns that we may seek to explain; and the documentation of what people have to say about their social and cultural arrangements, which we can use to interpret what we see and hear. This is not new. In the mid-twentieth century there was some debate as to the importance we should accord to these two strands of ethnographic evidence (in Cambridge there was the well-known disagreement between Fortes (1959, 1970, 220–28, 285–88) and E. R. Leach (1961a, 1961b, 1962), who, glowering at one another across a staircase in King’s College, argued about whether we should give priority to spoken rules of behavior or actual choices made by actors).6 The discipline has tended to emphasize the “what people have to say” dimension, particularly with the flight from explanation to interpretation, whereas both strands should further understanding from an ethnographicdeterminist perspective. It is necessary, to take a straightforward example, not only to document and interpret what people say about the conventions that inform swidden site selection but also to review the outcome of their actual behavior manifest in areas under cultivation (chapter 5). This is not currently popular, many anthropologists preferring to take what they hear, often without specifying exactly what they hear from whom (that is, giving the ethnographic evidence), and going on to infer what speakers mean, often from the perspective of some Western philosophical school. This is problematic in New Guinea where people can disagree markedly in their views and interpretations, and there is no authority to lay down the “correct” version. Such stateless orders query the use of an authoritative ethnographic voice without substantial data to back it up, whether observations of behavior, records of outcomes, texts of conversations discussing meaning, and so on. While ethnographic-determinism puts a premium on ethnographic documentation, it amounts, as I say, to considerably more than mere ethnographic description and data collection. Of the various approaches that characterize anthropology past and present, it is closest to the inelegantly named “historical-particularism” (see M. Harris 1969, 250–318), although it differs in its quest to explain and interpret ethnography, being aided here today by a range of social, psychological, ecological, and other ideologies/ theories. In the century that has elapsed since the pioneers demonstrated through firsthand fieldwork the primacy of ethnography, we have seen a number of intellectual ideologies or social science theories advanced and debated which, applied appropriately and sensitively, can illuminate the ethnographic data. The strategy of ethnographicdeterminism is to use any of these as appropriate, be it functionalism, structuralism, Marxism, feminism, symbolic interpretivism, postmodernism, or whatever. It is what I have called a mongrel approach to “theory”—taking any ideas that might be helpful to further understanding of the ethnography. Again, this is not new. While I am criti-

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cal of the use made of Mauss’s ideas, particularly with respect to the so-called “gift” for example, I entirely concur with his observation, “Truly great ethnologists have all been as eclectic in their choice of theoretical problems as they have been in their choice of method” (quoted in Lamont and Fournier 1992, 4). It extends the widely accepted holistic approach beyond ethnographic context to the intellectual tools deployed to make sense of what we observe and hear. None of these ideologies/theories has been proved wrong, although all have shortcomings, and while they may be out of fashion in the social sciences (which are highly susceptible to intellectual fashion changes), they are not necessarily out of date from the “ethnographic-determinist” viewpoint if they advance comprehension of any ethnography. Eclecticism is the hallmark of ethnographic-determinism, allowing the ethnographic evidence to determine the course of inquiries and debate, not contemporary Western ideologies. This aim is not new either. Referring to Firth’s work, for example, E. R. Leach (1984, 13) comments that he “never allowed himself to use ethnographic detail simply to exemplify a proposition which he has arrived at by a priori reasoning; the argument grows out of the evidence which is presented in massive detail.” (Although, as we shall see, he arguably had too much faith in formal economic assumptions.) And a central plank in E. R. Leach’s (1961b, 27) own rethinking of anthropology is the examination of “established ethnographic facts which does not start off with a battery of concepts thought up in a professorial study.” Eclecticism should help distance us from possibly ethnocentric intellectual fashions. Also, struggling with the ethnographic evidence in all its confusion and untidiness should help discourage the promotion of sweeping theories that scarcely do justice to highly complex sociocultural phenomena. The work of Malinowski is an object lesson here, paradoxically illustrating both tendencies: his Trobriand ethnography, in all its richness, does not fall into the one-dimensional theoretical trap, whereas his functional theorizing does, in arguing that human cultural arrangements relate at root to biological survival (or in the case of its descendant sociobiology, passing on of genes). This split-personality disposition has long puzzled me, akin to two persons writing under one name, as Barley (2004) recently pointed out: a ripe topic for today’s postmodern critics. The apparent lack of direction in my work indicates that I have in some measure achieved the eclectic goal of ethnographic-determinism. I am proud to be unlabelable! Allowing the ethnography to determine my route has resulted in a heterogeneous series of books, none of which have a standard structure reflecting a recognizable ideology/ theory. In some regards, this even suggests that I have avoided falling into the ethnocentric trap of imposing preconceived ideas on the Wola, as I am not recognizable to others as a member of such-and-such school. I wish that I could agree that this was so and that I have, as implied, broken out of the postmodern impasse. It is undeniable that all of the ideologies mentioned above are of Western intellectual origin, and so, as postmodernism has repeatedly pointed out, inevitably ethnocentric, whether employed orthodox wholesale or, as here, unorthodox piecemeal. But as an English academic I

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have nothing else by which to try to order and understand my ethnographic data, observations, and experiences. None of my Wola friends have ever come up with any answers to the sorts of questions that occur to me, such as, How do you ensure social order in an egalitarian political environment? They do not, so far as I am aware, have a tradition of comparative sociology; they are too busy socializing to imagine society. So I have to fall back on my own interpretations and explanations.

The “Economy” While no particular social science ideology informs this study, it would be quite spurious to pretend that certain ideas have not informed my research, that I have not imposed an intellectual structure that has roots in my English background. This was inevitable if I was going to make any sense of what I had observed and learned. It is arguable, for example, that the idea of scarcity with which this book opens is a thoroughly Western concern apparent in early Judeo-Christian cosmology, such as theologians’ interpretations of mankind’s fall from grace and eviction from Eden, following which event “Man was destined to wear out his body in the vain attempt to satisfy [his demands],” but “God was merciful” as “He gave us Economics” such that “human misery has been transformed into the positive science of how we make the best of our eternal insufficiencies, the most possible satisfaction from means that are always less than our wants” (Sahlins 1996, 397).7 This does not demonstrate the reverse, of course: that New Guinea Highland neo-Christians necessarily have no idea of scarcity and see the world in terms of abundance, with connotations of affluence. One of the aims of this book, as indicated in the opening, is to establish the relationship between these yin-andyang-like polar conceptions, one of my axiomatic assumptions being that all humans have to accommodate them somehow, that we all have varying notions of “not enough” and “enough,” while not necessarily expressed as capitalist-like scarcity. Although perhaps not immediately apparent to all, a set of Western-derived interests has certainly informed my work. So what are these interests that give it coherence? They originate, as I point out to those who sometimes ask me what I think I am doing, from a focus on the “economy.” Yet to date I have refrained from using the term economy in my work because I am unsure of its appropriateness to activities in the Was Valley, in the same way that I have avoided talking about Wola speakers comprising a “society.” It has served as a covert category delimiting my inquiries, which in part may explain why these seem directionless to some. I have been engaged in a study of the economy while not studying it, for it is arguable that there is no economy to study. One of the aims of this book is to make the category overt, confront the idea of economy and associated economic behavior, and assess its relevance, which will hopefully make it clear why I have eschewed using it. In this regard it chimes in with the sentiments of Stephen Gudeman, who has recently argued that “economic anthropology is fascinating because

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it forces us to reexamine our language, values, and everyday categories, especially in market societies where the economic spirit is prominent in practices and narratives about life” (2005, 112). From the beginning I have been occupied with what I have taken to be the study of various aspects of a New Guinea Highland “economy.” This theme dates from my postgraduate days, when I set out this aim in my doctoral research proposal, and I have been engaged with it ever since. To quote from my original research proposal, now something of a historical document: “I plan to work in the Southern Highlands. . . . The idiosyncratic nature of anthropological fieldwork makes it difficult to specify with accuracy the exact location. . . . economics is the topic on which I plan to concentrate my attention . . . under the conventional anthropological headings of A). raw materials, B). labor, C). capital and property, D). production, E). distribution, F). consumption. . . . I hope to formulate certain indigenous economic principles.”8 It has proved a longterm project, far longer than I ever imagined when I drew up my research program, which was perhaps just as well, for if I had realized the commitment demanded to see it through, I might have had second thoughts. In a sense I have been trying to finish my Ph.D. research all these years, which could be taken as an indictment of the supervision that I received for allowing me to devise such an outrageously ambitious and undoable research plan.9 On the other hand, it arguably set me on the “ethnographicdeterminist” road, certain opinion in Cambridge at the time being that too much guidance before entering the field could distort a neophyte researcher’s views. It affirmed that the field experience—namely, the ethnography—should determine the course of research. (It is ironic to think of Meyer Fortes in this context, then head of department and proponent of this view, given the unhelpful influence of his descent theory on Highlands ethnographers.) So I set off innocently to study a New Guinea economy, only to encounter the Wola “exchange mania”! Regarding my overly ambitious research plans, I well remember the incredulity on the faces of some panel members when I outlined them during a disastrous interview for a post in Edinburgh; an early encounter with the “What do you think you are doing?” question. Even before the short-term pressures of the notorious Research Assessment Exercise, it appeared that some academics could not conceive of a long-term research strategy.10 This was particularly evident when someone on the panel, who claimed some expertise in demography, inquired into the plans I had outlined for collecting and analyzing population data. Admittedly, it has taken me some years to publish these data— in this book (chapter 7)—but hopefully the results belie his dismissive comments on my plans, which he clearly thought poor. He confused a wish to allow inductive space for the ethnography with a lack of deductive reason and acquaintance with necessary theory.11 Even at that time I was a firm believer in letting the “story” emerge from the facts, with their analysis determining the direction of the work, and not imposing a hypothesis on them in advance. This clearly seemed to him like a mindless investiga-

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tion rather than structured research. He could not see that having a research plan in the sense that he understood it ran the risk of gross distortion before the research even began, and would probably consider “ethnographic-determinism” as no more than tosh. The result was—predictably, with hindsight—a rejection letter, one of many that I have collected over the years—sufficient probably to paper a wall—many received, I suspect, because I have been thought off-message, not subscribing to current “theory.” I have no regrets; seeing several of these short-lived intellectual fashions come to an end over the years has reinforced my belief in the primacy of ethnographic integrity. This book returns to face squarely, and puzzle over, some of the implications of engaging in the study of what I took to be the “economy” of the New Guinea Highlands. It asks how relevant this idea is to Wola life. Although the “economy” is the field that I selected, it is not the only one, of course, by which I could have organized and interpreted the ethnographic data. Another that I could have used is forest-human relations, focusing the analysis of farming, hunting, ethnobotanical, ethnozoological, plant, animal, and environmental data on forest issues. (I have played around with the idea, having a book outline and synopsis developed around this theme.) Forest-human relations feature here to some extent, notably in relation to demographic pressures and deforestation, but as a secondary issue. How valid or distorting is the category of the “economy,” emphatically a Western one, which I have imposed on the ethnographic data in addressing issues of interest to me? The word “economy” is in some ways an unhappy one. It brings to mind the notion of the market, which has scant place where livelihoods center on household production and consumption. And it conjures up a discipline that has its own share of exotic-sounding theories—Keynesianism, monetarism, laissez-faire, entrepreneurialism, capitalism, supply-side economics—that seem decidedly out of place in New Guinea Highland society. Furthermore, many of the issues of interest to economists are irrelevant here, such as business firms and monopoly controls, fiscal policy and tax regimes, investment banking and share brokering, interest rates and dividend discounts, international trade and currency rates (except insofar as these concern the faraway government of Papua New Guinea and impact indirectly on the Southern Highlands, which is currently minimally, national economic mismanagement inhibiting the region’s linkage to the global economy). Such macroeconomic issues relate to the political economies of state orders, and so understandably are irrelevant to stateless ones. In casting a critical look at the concept of economy and associated economic behavior in the context of the New Guinea Highlands, this book queries the extent to which these have universal relevance. Can they be used everywhere to make some sense of human behavior, even if the people themselves make no mention of such ideas, such as the Wola, who have no word to my knowledge equivalent to “economy.” In a sense, the imposition of outside intellectual concerns, such as those imported through the use of the word economy, is unavoidable, as the foregoing discussion suggests. Roy Wagner

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(1981), for example, talks about us “inventing culture,” and Marilyn Strathern (1985) refers to categories such as economy as “provisionally constitutive”; I seek to tease out the implications of my provisional invention of a Was Valley economy. Inevitably, as an English academic I use the English language to do my job—which is itself a EuroAmerican invention—namely, to interpret and express what I think I have learned about another culture for members of my own, which comprises an English reading audience. To be true to the Wola view it would be necessary to write in their language. Not only would it be unintelligible to English readers but also, as it lacks many words to express and explore certain problems that occur to me, it would not allow me to formulate some ideas or allow the sort of analysis that I wish to pursue. Indeed, to be really true to the Wola it would be necessary to produce the work in spoken format on a compact disk to replicate their oral tradition. Ethnographers have faced this conundrum for generations; Malinowski (1932, xlvii) refers to “traduttore traditore,” noting that one “cannot help it.”12 The difficulty is finding the right words, for if they are inappropriate we import foreign ideas: witness the term economy. If I am not careful I shall find myself at a loss for words, unable to express what I think I understand about Wola life. This is where A. M. Strathern (1990, 213) appears to find herself after demanding we move away from the individual and society antinomy that “bedevils” Melanesian notions of “personhood,” for the way to effect this move apparently is to create “an illusion—Highlands individuals are not individuals; comparing is not comparing—an illusion, in so far as striving to present certain things as true forces the language of description into untruths,” which is otherwise a mysterious injunction. It is a question of how subtle we can make our impositions. We have to take care in glossing institutions and practices into English categories, whether economic or other, to avoid unnecessary confusion and pointless arguments. It is not easy. The words we have available are somewhat secondhand in their meanings, or, as John Fowles put it in his novel The Collector, “Words are all so used, they’ve been used about so many other things,” and have shades of meaning, sometimes disputed and subject to change over time. Unfortunately, we have not always been sufficiently careful, resulting in a subject littered with woolly concepts and poorly defined terms, bringing to mind Humpty Dumpty telling Alice in Through the Looking Glass that words signified what he chose them to mean. Indeed, some terms have been used by different writers to label such a variety of different institutions that they are now useless for precise writing; they are virtually meaningless, as witnessed by the long-running debate on the universality or otherwise of “money.” One way to proceed is to use local terms where they exist for key concepts, as I have throughout my work and continue here (Sillitoe 1979b, 48). This is a long-established procedure, leaving translation, if necessary, to those working in comparative contexts; as Guiart (2003, 163) recently reaffirmed, “The modern scientific method requires that one specifies key vernacular concepts, those terms found in each culture that specify major factual and semantic fields where they are met.”

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Economy: A Definition If the use of foreign categories such as economy or whatever is unavoidable, it is important to know what they mean to the author. What do I understood the economy to be, and how has that understanding circumscribed and informed my research? While the question is easy to ask—like so many—it has no straightforward answer. There has been a long-running debate over the appropriateness of talking about the economy outside market contexts and the universal applicability of associated economic principles. The field of economic anthropology is one fraught with argument and disagreement. Different scholars understand it to cover different issues, and they argue for a number of different approaches. The onetime “formalists” argue that Western economics has universal relevance, that ideas developed to explain the operation of capitalist economies, either orthodox formal economic theory (largely pre-Keynesian classical microeconomics) or Marxist reformulations of it, help us to understand the economic organization of all societies. Others, the so-called substantivists, followed subsequently by some Marxists, and currently those marching under the relativist postmodern banner, argue vehemently for the reverse, that these capitalist principles do not help—indeed, worse, they confuse the issues at stake and prevent us from achieving any significant understanding (Wilk 1996, 3–18).13 Some of these latter writers question the existence of economies elsewhere, which is not quite as stupid as it first sounds because the subject matter that falls within the economic domain in cross-cultural contexts is so wide and diverse that it is indeed difficult to conceive of it fitting into one field. This suggests that I have written five books, and now a sixth, focused on a subject that potentially does not exist—apparently reaffirming the postmodernists’ predictions—for the Wola “economy” is to some extent a category of my imagination, not being a verbalized local one. An obvious point relating to the applicability or otherwise of Western economic theories is that economists intend these to explain what happens in their own society (namely, capitalist/ communist industrial society as it has developed from the eighteenth century through to the present day), where relationships of economic significance are of a quite different order to those in small-scale societies. We cannot expect these theories to apply to such societies without some modification, as long realized—for example, in a markedly old-fashioned evolutionary framed text on economic anthropology, Thurnwald (1932, 4) criticized “the dominance of an abstract homo oeconomicus” Western view, arguing that “we have to construct several homines oeconomicos, each representing” a different “economic tendency.” The question is the extent to which these theories can or cannot be so modified: in short, whether our intellectual category of “economic thought” is relevant.14 While they are obvious, there are some points of difference that it is perhaps as well to make clear. The capitalist Euro-American economy is in some regards the logical antithesis of the subsistence New Guinea Highland one. While in the former we find

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the domestic sphere almost separated from the wider economy, in the latter we find little differentiation. Although the household remains a major consuming unit in capitalist society, it is rarely a unit of production. Other social groups (such as business firms) carry out production, and they are founded on the principle and ethic of contract rather than kinship (or, as Maine [1861] termed the distinction, contract rather than status), such that industrialism has featured the reduction of the family to a small nuclear group, playing down all other kin-founded associations. In the Was Valley the unit of consumption is also the unit of production. It is the domestic group, most usually an extended family. There is little distribution between production and consumption: those who cultivate crops also eat them; they go largely from land to mouth, infrequently changing hands—this does not imply a hand to mouth existence, which their subsistence arrangements belie. There is nothing new here. Over two centuries ago, on the first page of his classic book Wealth of Nations, widely cited as a founding work of economics, Adam Smith (1904, 1:1) commented that in “savage nations” (as the language of the time depicted tribal people), “every individual who is able to work, is more or less employed in useful labour, and endeavours to provide, as well as he can, the necessaries and conveniences of life, for himself, or such of his family or tribe as are either too old, or too young,”15 and went on to contrast this with “civilised nations,” in which, he argued, the division of labor according to different occupations was responsible for material prosperity. Furthermore, the distributive systems of large-scale societies depend on purchase, such that exchanges are largely impersonal and between strangers, and repayment is usually immediate. The transactions are socially neutral and do not contribute to the perpetuation of social relationships (or at least, need not, because any two persons entering into a transaction might never see one another again). In such market contexts buyers and sellers seek to negotiate the best deal (that is, value for money) possible for themselves given constraining economic circumstances like supply, demand, inflation, and so on. It is this market-driven supply and demand view of the world that contributes to perceptions of scarcity, mentioned previously. In contrast, transactions among the Wola have a large social component, featuring what anthropologists call “balanced reciprocity.” People place considerable value on equality and there is little accumulation of either food or personal possessions. The exchange of wealth between nominated kin on prescribed social occasions, such as at marriage and death, is highly significant, as mentioned. It is, I argue, at the center of the stateless political order (Sillitoe 1979b). These exchange institutions are quite different from those of markets. They have little to do with material welfare, and much to do with social well-being. It is difficult to give a crisp and precise definition of economy and economic behavior that covers such diverse social orders. Indeed, one of the concerns of this book is to arrive at some understanding of the content of this field and its relevance to the New Guinea Highlands—so, in a sense, matters relating to definition will continually exercise us. Yet we need some minimal definition to proceed. So what have I in mind as the economy? It is, at root, any activity that concerns subsistence and material existence:

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that is, how people secure their food, the tools they make for this purpose, and the other artifacts they manufacture to ensure survival (such as housing, clothing, and so on). This core definition features in classic economics texts too, such as Marshall’s influential Principles of Economics, where he defines the economy as that “part of individual and social action which is most closely connected with the attainment and with the use of the material requisites of well-being” (1890, 1). And Raymond Firth (1965, 18), doyen of economic anthropology, makes similar assumptions, referring, for instance, to “the production of goods, including food, and the furnishing of services . . . wherein the objects of production serve a range of ends.” The assumption is that the rationale of any economic system is to satisfy material wants by the production and, as necessary, distribution of goods and services.16 The idea that subsistence is somehow central to economic organization everywhere dates from the time that Victorians first took interest in these matters, and runs through all the thinking that leads up to the present day (though sometimes in a rather obscure and implicit manner, nevertheless it is there). We regularly speak of the Aborigines having a “hunter-gatherer economy,” for example, or of the Masai having a “pastoral economy,” and conceive of economic development as an evolutionary process involving progressive technological sophistication. All this implies that economics is centrally concerned with the study of peoples’ material livelihoods. While all human beings, regardless of culture, pursue such activities, the dilemma is that they are organized to do so in many different ways. It is here that problems arise. When we go beyond accounts of technology or subsistence activities to how these relate to the wider social order, we invariably find ourselves considering political matters too. We cannot separate the economic order from the political one; they are, as we say, embedded one in the other, as evident in the notion of political economy. This is most apparent when it comes to distribution or exchange in the New Guinea Highlands. Economic activity does not cease with production, which is only the first stage in any economic process (Gudeman 1986, 35–36). Once they have made or grown things, people do not necessarily sit down and use or consume them (although quite often in small-scale communities such as that of the Wola, they may do so). They go on to traffic their products with others in return for what they have made, such commerce having reached its height in capitalist society (aided by money—a specialized medium to facilitate such behavior). After this we have consumption. Any distribution, and the consumption patterns to which it gives rise, is inevitably an aspect of the political order. We find individuals trying to manipulate the flow of goods and services to their advantage, secure some kind of control over productive resources to this end, attempting to increase the amounts coming to them (and so improve their standard of living at the expense of others, who inevitably have to go without to supply them). It was investigating this connection, and how some exploited it at the expense of others, that gave Karl Marx’s analysis of late nineteenth-century capitalist society its perceptive edge. It is a connection that is potentially present in all societies, although some, including that of

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the Wola, I argue, have evolved subtle safeguards and balances to prevent any individuals or groups from ruthlessly exploiting it. Their political systems are so constituted as to circumscribe the extent to which any interest groups can control productive and distributive processes. The blurring that can consequently occur between our categories of the economic and political can confuse our efforts to identify the economy elsewhere. Sometimes we find writers who claim to be writing about economic matters, in considering issues relating to exchange, who are referring more to political ones. This is particularly so in parts of the Pacific where we find political orders, such as that of the Wola, founded on the principle of exchange, resulting in intriguing acephalous political economies. This book seeks a middle way between the universalists and the relativists in deciding how relevant our concepts of economy and economic behavior are to New Guinea Highland life. While economic considerations would appear to have little relevance to subsistence activities—that broad area defined as the economy—they may be relevant in other contexts. It may seem strange visualizing economic behavior that does not relate to what we have defined as the economy, but the result is the disappearance of many of the issues at the center of the debate over the relevance or otherwise of formal or Marxist economic concepts elsewhere.

Agriculture as Economics Subsistence farming is at the core of the Wola livelihood strategy. So, taking our definition of the economy as relating pivotally to subsistence activities, the Wola “economy”—whatever we might finally decide it is—must relate in large part to agriculture. This book consequently focuses on agricultural issues as central to furthering understanding of Wola economic issues. It not only features an ethnographic inquiry into the subsistence regime, supported by analysis of relevant quantitative data, but also takes the opportunity to explore the usefulness of formal economic ideas to understanding the livelihood system, and to make a contribution to the refinement of cross-cultural economic thought. It is, from this perspective, a study in agricultural economics, albeit radically different from that envisaged by any text in this field that concerns market economics (for example, see Colman and Young 1990). Another response that I sometimes give to the “What do you think you are doing?” question is to say that I am engaged in the documentation and analysis of a Highlands agricultural regime. In this context, I occasionally mention Conklin’s (1961) research agenda, outlined in Current Anthropology, for the study of shifting cultivation, and also the “farming systems research” literature (for example, FAO 1990) that deals with various farming regimes. These comprise excellent guides, outlining exhaustive research programs to further understanding of farming issues; a task that proved far more detailed, as it turned out, than I had anticipated when I embarked on my own farming systems project. Although I discovered this literature some time after I had embarked on

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“my project” and it did not determine my initial program of fieldwork, it subsequently helped organize my thoughts and approach, and proved useful as a guide to topics for further fieldwork; I have a copy of Conklin’s paper, for instance, with various issues ticked off as I have covered them. We know a considerable amount about the farming regime of the Highlands region, thanks to several studies (Brookfield and Brown 1963; Rappaport 1968; Clarke 1971; Waddell 1972; Powell et al. 1975; Marecek 1977; Allen 1984a; Harwood and Vlassak 2004). This book builds further on these, and also extends on some of my previous work, notably on crop cultivation (Sillitoe 1983), land resources (Sillitoe 1996), and animal husbandry (Sillitoe 2003). The investigation of agricultural practices relates to the documentation of experiential knowledge and skills, returning us to the demands of “ethnographic-determinism.” Much agricultural activity is an ad hoc performance that responds to circumstances rather than a planned pursuit (Richards 1993). It is often not discussed and arranged consciously. It is something that you do. For example, when a man starts clearing a garden, he cannot say where it will extend to, specify its final size. He is open-minded about the method of enclosure; he might uncover an old silted ditch, for instance, and reexcavate it. Likewise, the crops his family plants and where is not determined until they proceed with tillage and take whatever planting materials come to hand from established gardens, together with any dried seeds stored away, and so on. A goodly part of human behavior is similarly provisional in character. The need to pay attention to ethnographic evidence to document these unspoken and skilled aspects of life has increasingly become evident, reinforcing my ethnographic-determinist convictions. This book continues my efforts to deal with such skills. Indeed, I have only realized retrospectively that, somewhat akin to an improvised performance, I have been heading in this direction, which is perhaps the way with many issues that are initially unclear and evolve through our struggles to make sense of experience. It is crucial to furthering our understanding of tacit issues that we pay close attention to ethnographic evidence. Again we run into the inadequacy of words, as gardening is not something debated but comprises skilled knowledge acted upon. In order to capture some of this activity we have to resort to other media, such as film. The movie Ganonkiyba Garden, which comprises part of this study, includes some such documentation of gardening activities.17 We have given sufficient attention, hopefully, to the somewhat dry concerns of definition, to dispel some of the potential misapprehensions associated with this book, and turn to some ethnography, briefly introducing the Wola of Highland Papua New Guinea.

The Farming Regime The Wola depend largely on farming for their subsistence; swidden cultivation supplies the overwhelming majority with most of their food. They do not depend on hunting and gathering to any extent (Sillitoe 2003), and today they make considerably less use of locally occurring raw materials than previously to manufacture things (Silli-

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toe 1988). They subsist on a predominantly vegetable diet in which sweet potato is the staple, typically cultivated in composted mounds; other crops include bananas, various cucurbits, taro, and greens. They are swidden and fallow horticulturalists, cultivating sites for varying periods before abandoning them. They are skillful farmers and heirs to an agricultural tradition that may put them among the first in the history of humankind to adopt a sedentary existence in which people systematically manipulated and managed the natural environment for the cultivation of domesticated plants. It is likely that contemporary farming practices descend from earlier taro and yam tuber cultivation, which may have featured some mounding, as practiced today, and associated management strategies (Golson 1982; Bayliss-Smith and Golson 1992a). Opportunities to farm cash crops are few. Individuals seeking to enter their country’s slowly expanding cash economy migrate as labor elsewhere, with few openings locally. They go largely to the Western Highlands region where, interestingly enough, if they remain for any period of time and forge relations with the local population sufficient to permit access to land, they clear and cultivate food gardens. In the Australian Agency for International Development’s encyclopedic survey of Papua New Guinea’s agricultural systems, the Wola region falls into the Southern Highlands Province: Agricultural System Number 14 (Bourke et al. 1995, 61). Sweet potato cultivations predominate in this system; with bananas and taro listed as secondary staples. These cultivations comprise two subsystems: one has short grass fallow of one to four years (80 percent of garden land) and the other cane grass and short woody regrowth for fifteen to twenty-five years (20 percent of garden land); both are cropped three to five times between fallows. Mixed vegetable and household gardens are also significant. Soil tillage and use of compost are important in this system, as is drainage control using beds. This agronomic characterization broadly reflects the Wola classification of cultivations. They distinguish between three principal types of garden (Sillitoe 1983, 1996):18 • hokay em = gardens in which sweet potato predominates, sometimes as a monocrop, otherwise together with pumpkin, some greens, and perhaps some long-maturing crops such as bananas and sugarcane (average garden area 1,150 m2—overwhelmingly comprise the largest area under cultivation; often called just em [garden], as they make up the majority of gardens, with hokay [sweet potato] implicitly understood);19 • em g emb = small mixed-vegetable gardens, often adjacent to houses (average area 90 m2—sometimes incorporated subsequently into long-term sweet potato gardens, when coterminous); • ma em = gardens in which taro predominates (average area 495 m2). The agricultural regime is an intriguing one. It spans a range of management practices from classic shifting cultivation—where sites are cultivated once or twice before abandonment to natural fallow for many years to conserve productivity—through to

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Figure 1.1. Sweet potato garden with clumps of sugarcane

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Figure 1.2. Taro garden

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Figure 1.3. Small mixed-vegetable garden (on old house site)

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To view this image, please refer to the print version of this book.

Figure 1.4. Garden area under coarse grass fallow

semipermanent farming of sites—fertility managed through composting and the occasional brief fallow under grass.20 The hokay em (sweet potato gardens) encompass this spectrum, ranging from newly cultivated swiddens with a variety of crops through to long-established cultivations largely under sweet potato. The newly cultivated ones are cleared from montane or secondary forest, together with long-term vegetation successions of less biomass on shorter fallow cycles (notably stout-culmed cane grasses), and the long-established ones from herbaceous weeds and grasses that colonize sites, pulled up with any remaining crop plants, the plots replanted without any substantial fallow break. The agricultural system hence falls nominally under the category of “shifting cultivation” but features some long-term cultivations, even semicontinuous farming of certain sites with no outside inputs nor dramatic declines in tuber yields (Sillitoe 1996). These agricultural practices, revolving around a sedentary variation of shifting cultivation, result in two broad classes of garden: those cleared and planted once with a wide variety of crops, sometimes under a classic one-off swidden regime, and those cultivated repeatedly again several times, sometimes over decades, with brief grassy fallow spells, which support a narrower range of crops, largely sweet potato. About one-third of any land currently under cultivation will be farmed for the first time, men having cleared it of substantial natural vegetation, comprising trees and/or cane grass tussocks. The other two-thirds will be recultivations, some featuring brief grassy-herbaceous fallows; about one-fifth of these garden areas will have been recultivated five or more times. The farming regime, like shifting cultivation systems generally, is labor intensive, featuring hand-wielded tools, largely axes and digging sticks. It features a sexual division of labor.21 This is an aspect of the marked separation of the sexes that characterizes Wola life, men observing a number of conventions that keep them apart from women, such as the occupation of separate houses within homesteads. Men do the initial heavy ax work, felling trees and clearing vegetation from areas; they also enclose them, usually with fences and sometimes ditches as necessary to keep pigs out. They pull up roots

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from the enclosed area, and pollard the branches off large trees left standing there. Men and women work together subsequently to burn the dried cut vegetation strewn across the cleared plot; an important stage, this burning serves to promote the release of nutrients to crops previously locked up in the standing vegetation by reducing it to ash readily mixed with the soil.22 Women largely take over following clearance and burning off and are responsible for breaking up the soil as necessary, planting the majority of crops, subsequently weeding them, and finally harvesting most of the food from the garden (see chapter 8 for further details; also Abaya 1978 on stages of garden preparation and gendered labor divisions under this farming system). The recultivation of established sites falls to women. They uproot weeds and grasses, plus any remaining crops, and use this material as compost, perhaps sun-dried, sometimes burned. They till the exposed soil, commonly heaping it into mounds, and plant with crops, largely sweet potato.

The Wola Region The Wola speakers occupy five valleys in the Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, northeast of Lake Kutubu, between 6° 0′/15′ south latitude and 143° 15′/45′ east longitude. The majority of the population lives between 1,600 and 2,000 meters a.s.l., from the Ak Valley in the west to the Mendi Valley in the east (map 1.1). The data discussed in this book come from the Nipa Basin Census Division, notably the Was (or Wage) River valley in the west of the Wola region. They speak a language of the West-Central Family (part of the extensive East New Guinea Highlands Stock).23 The topography is mountainous, rugged, and precipitous, with turbulent rivers flowing along valley floors (CSIRO 1965). People live along the valley sides, leaving the intervening watersheds largely unpopulated. In the valleys, where they have cultivated extensively, there are areas of dense cane grass interspersed with the grassy clearings of fallow or recently abandoned cultivations and the bare soil and crop foliage of current gardens. Lower montane rain forest occurs on the mountains and in the unpopulated parts of river valleys. The climate is generally equable, many days featuring sunny mornings and rainy afternoons. It is of the “Lower Montane Humid” type (McAlpine, Keig, and Falls 1983, 160). It is characterized by high annual rainfall (average 3,011 mm), cool temperatures, due to the moderating effect of altitude (mean daily temperature 18°C). Variations in topography and altitude give rise to numerous local microclimates. There are no notable seasons sufficient to influence cultivation, although the Wola distinguish two seasons called ebenjip and bulenjip, which equate with the Southern Hemisphere’s summer and winter (Sillitoe 1996, 55–62; see also chapter 10). The same climatic conditions largely prevail throughout the year, although unpredictable perturbations can occur, such as overly dry or wet weather, which can adversely affect crop yields. The geology is sedimentary largely, limestone mainly, with igneous rocks of more recent volcanic origin on the margins of the region. In the recent geological past it was

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Map 1.1. New Guinea: Wola region and neighbors

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Figure 1.5. Looking northward up the Was Valley

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Figure 1.6. View across the Was Valley looking northwestward with a sweet potato garden in the foreground

uplifted, folded, and faulted, resulting in the current northwest/southeast topographical axis. The recent occurrence of the folding accounts for the landscape’s rugged and sharp relief. Frequent earth tremors indicate that these movements continue today. The soils—largely Andosols and Inceptisols—are derived from the sedimentary parent materials, variably affected by volcanic ash (dominated by it, to no evident effects), with some alluvial redeposition. Some are subject to wet conditions and are gleyed; others are peaty. These young soils, experiencing several rejuvenating episodes of volcanic ash fall, are fairly productive with appropriate management. According to the Wola, they find it difficult to assess soil fertility before cultivation, soils changing and sometimes improving with use. Soil inspection tells them little about possible yields and does not feature overtly in the choice of garden plots (Sillitoe 1996). Soil conditions may enter indirectly into their calculations, because some of the topographical factors that inform choice of site—such as slope, terrain, and so on—also affect soil formation processes (chapter 5).

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Figure 1.7. Ridge under montane rain forest

The region’s vegetation relates to topography and altitude, notably as these influence settlement patterns and land use. The Wola distinguish nine vegetation communities, ranging from climax montane forest to secondary grassland; they include wetlands, rocky and alpine vegetation, recently abandoned garden successions of pioneer herbs and grasses, and long-term regrowth of cane grass and secondary forest (Sillitoe 1996, 179–200). They identify several hundred different plants by name. In the valley areas between 1,600 m and 2,000 m, where people cultivate most of their gardens, dense cane grass predominates, with a limited range of soft-wooded secondary trees, interspersed with clearings of shorter grass and gardens. The wildlife population here is relatively meager, consisting primarily of small rodents and some birds. On steep and uncultivable land, pockets of undisturbed forest occur. Over 2,000 m, on high mountains and watershed ridges and dolines, and in the unpopulated areas of river valleys, lower montane rain forest predominates, with a few patches of regrowth and occasional gardens. These regions support many sorts of trees and other plants and are notably richer in wildlife, with varied animal populations of marsupials, rodents, and birds, some of them large and colorful.

Wola Culture The Wola live in squat houses scattered along the sides of valleys and basins, in the areas of extensive cane grassland situated between heavily forested watersheds. Their homesteads comprise variably composed family groups, ranging from a man and his wife or wives and their children, to three or four related men together with their nuclear families and other relatives (such as unmarried sisters, widowed parents, and so on). Access to arable land features prominently in these social arrangements. Several factors inform a family’s selection of new garden sites. Both physical and social issues feature, including topography, vegetation cover, and distance to homestead (chapter 5). The land tenure system is also significant, determining where families have rights to

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To view this image, please refer to the print version of this book.

Figure 1.8. Homestead on a knoll surrounded by dense cane grass

areas, traced through either consanguines or affines (chapter 4). While the question of access is important, the flexibility of Wola tenure arrangements affords considerable choice (both kin and situational factors feature). The empirical constitution of local groups reflects this, the eclectic exercise of land rights giving them a bilateral perspective, regardless of men’s spoken preference to live where their father resided (many do so each generation, having lived there before marriage, knowing the region and its residents, and insisting their wives move). Local territorial groupings of kin called semonda (large families) consequently comprise loosely constituted patrifilially biased bilateral kin corporations (Ryan 1959; Sillitoe 1979b; Lederman 1986b). The Wola region comprises many territories identified with these small, kin-constituted communities (average population circa three hundred persons); their subdivisions, called semg enk (small families), structure rights to cultivable land. These permanent and named local groups result from the collection of several related families on territories where they share land rights. Related kin residing on the same territory recognize no obligations to support these local groups in certain situations as corporations representing their collective interests; they do not talk about joining together on this basis for political action. The action groups of their society are more akin to temporary coalitions that come together to pursue an activity jointly. It is the exchange of wealth, a complex institution, and not corporate clan-group obligation that is crucial to the ordering of social life, as mentioned previously, while simultaneously affording individuals comparative political freedom. The sizeable pig herds supply these transactions, people handing animals around to one another, together with other exchangeables such as seashells and cosmetic oil, and today cash, in the interminable series of sociopolitical exchanges that mark all important social events. These transactions between defined categories of kin on specified social occasions, such as at a marriage or following a death, sometimes bringing together large numbers of people, are pivotal, I argue, to the ordering of their fiercely egalitarian,

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sometimes violent, social life. Here I understand egalitarian to indicate “a lack of hierarchical authority, diffusion of the means of coercion, and individual and democratic decision making” (Salzman 1999, 35). The importance put on the political sovereignty and equality of individuals in this stateless polity poses, at first sight, problems for the continuance of social order. The institutionalized exchange of wealth remains today a significant force in the accommodation of these egalitarian values with weak central government authority (Sillitoe 1979b). Lawless “rascal” activity is prevalent throughout the region. Violence is a common feature of life as people defend their individual rights. Kin usually support one another in disputes, which sometimes erupt into armed confrontations, “tribal warfare” remaining a persistent feature of the stateless regime, thwarting those who wish to promote capitalist development. The Wola value exchange highly, according high status to those who excel at it. These persons, termed ol howma (men of the clearing), achieve renowned reputations (Sillitoe 1979b)—they are the equivalent of “big men” elsewhere (Berndt and Lawrence 1973; Godelier and Strathern 1991; Lederman 1990). It is even possible sometimes for these more able men, by virtue of their admired success, to exert a marginal degree of influence over decisions reached by those united for some purpose. But their success does not earn them the status of leader nor extend to them any authority to direct the actions of others, as it reportedly does in some regions; if they attempted to exert control, however subtle, over the actions of others this would offend against the ethos of equality that pervades political relations. When several persons decide to cooperate together in some venture no one leads them, they reach consensual decisions, coordinating their otherwise self-calculated actions by mutual agreement. If men could use any influence they have in a direct political way, they would probably seek, for instance, to extend control over and increase productive activities to their benefit. We might expect them to try to drive up agricultural output with households depending on garden produce not only to meet subsistence needs but also to fodder the highly valued pigs that feature in sociopolitical exchange transactions. But a comparison of horticultural activities with gardeners’ social status reveals no apparent trend for successful ol howma men to differ from others; any variations between them appear random (chapters 5 and 6) and no one can exert any more control than anyone else. This accords with people’s assertions that families do not differ in their cultivation arrangements because of variations in the social standing of their menfolk. Supernatural conceptions centered on beliefs in the ability of ancestor spirits maliciously to cause sickness and death by “eating” vital organs, in various malevolent forest spirit forces, and in others’ powers of sorcery and “poison.” Sometimes people offered pigs to restrain these nasty supernatural forces. Many today have converted to Christianity, while continuing to fear that traditional spirit forces inhabit their homeland, and regularly attend mission services, although the behavior of some younger persons who engage, to the consternation of others, in “rascal” criminality, seems impervious to mission influence. The government station at Nipa in the Nembi Valley nominally

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has some administrative offices, including a police station, school, and health center, and some trade stores. But the region is today effectively beyond national government jurisdiction due to the collapse of local administration under the weight of central and provincial government corruption and malfeasance and widespread civil disruption at elections. The region has long been described as peripheral in development terms, even though the Highlands Highway runs through it. But travel is hazardous, with armed highway robbery common. There is little prospect of improvement in the near future, the failing of the state making potential investors wary, such as those who might otherwise seek to exploit the gas and oil finds in the region, on which the local population has long pinned its hopes of material advancement. The circumstances currently beg the relevance of the notion of economic development to the region, which in turn raises again the pertinence of the idea of economy.

CHAPTER 2

Economics and the Self-Interested Individual

W

hile chapter 1’s definition of the economy, focusing on the material aspects of existence, circumscribes a domain of human behavior, it remains to decide which aspects of Western economic thought are relevant to understanding life in the Was Valley. Many topics of interest to economists, as intimated, are irrelevant. The differences between large-scale capitalist society, such as that of Europe, and small-scale subsistence society, such as that of the Wola, are so vast that they appear to occupy quite separate realms. The economist-cum-anthropologist George Dalton (1961, 1) pointed out that a fundamental difference is that in capitalist societies “everyone derives his living from selling something to the market.” In other words, persons are specialized according to occupation and have to sell the goods or services that they specialize in, buying in return the many things that they do not produce but that are nevertheless necessary to their well-being. In the Wealth of Nations, for example, Adam Smith attributed prosperity to labor specialization, arguing that it significantly increased productivity (the argument used to justify today’s global free trade campaign). But it simultaneously reinforces hierarchical sociopolitical relations, some occupations rewarded above and controlling others. The social philosopher Emile Durkheim (1933) made a sociological virtue of this in his influential book Division of Labour, arguing that it promoted superior “organic solidarity,” although at considerable cost to the working classes herded into mills, manufactories, and mines. The Wola ethnography takes the collective advantage argument to task, suggesting the possibility of a division of labor that subverts the possibility of sociopolitical hierarchy, guaranteeing equal gain or pain for all, a point of profound difference with the capitalist economic order (Sillitoe 1985). Arrangements in the New Guinea Highlands contrast directly with capitalist society, as mentioned, families producing enough for

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their own subsistence, such that there is no specialization by occupation. There is consequently no call, as the land to mouth image evokes, for elaborate distribution networks regarding subsistence, such as integrate specialists together in market systems. This would not have surprised Adam Smith who, seeking to understand the monetary value attributed to labor in wages, pointed out, “In a savage nation every one enjoys the whole fruit of his own labour” (1896, 162) and there was consequently no use for money. In market contexts we must exchange to subsist and these economic transactions, which comprise the majority in our lives, need not have any social component, which is the exact reverse of subsistence orders, where all produce enough for themselves, and exchange becomes something engaged upon preeminently for sociopolitical reasons.

Economics: Further Definition Market specialization makes it necessary to have some way of comparing and valuing the disparate goods and services produced, a commonly transactable medium to facilitate their exchange: namely, money. As Dalton (1961, 14) observes, “Few economic transactions take place without the use of money. . . . It is no accident that such is the case: the use of all-purpose money is a requisite for a market-organized economy because all labor and [raw materials], as well as finished outputs, must bear price tags expressed in the same money in order for buyers and sellers to transact them through the market.” And microeconomic theory developed, from Smith to Ricardo and Marshall, in an attempt to understand these transactional forces, seeking to explain what determines prices in a market economy, concentrating on price mechanisms because of their crucial integrative role in determining supply and demand, outputs, and incomes. It is the absence of money from regions such as the Was Valley that gives rise to some of our problems.1 If we say that money defines the economic realm, as in some ways it does for us, then we can stop here because according to this definition the Wola, not using money to secure their subsistence, cannot logically have an economy. While such reasoning is questionable, it is nonetheless difficult to conceive of capitalist economic concerns having relevance to the Wola “economy,” and this might tempt us, along with the “substantivists” and postmodernists, to declare that it is fruitless to seek any connections, and furthermore that to do so is to invite gross distortion. In this event it would probably be most honest to stop talking about the Wola having an economy at all, declare it an ethnocentric imposition. The core assumptions of economics make no mention of money necessarily. They are so general that they arguably might apply to any community, anywhere in the world and at any time in history. These irreducible assumptions, in the words of Firth (1965, 356), are “that economic activity consists in the application of scarce means to alternative ends; [and furthermore] that this application is governed by principles of rational choice; and that the aim of all individuals engaged in economic activity is to maximize

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their satisfactions.” This definition exactly parallels that given in economics textbooks, such as L. Robbins’s (1935, 15) influential one, where he tells us that “scarcity of means to satisfy ends of varying importance is an almost ubiquitous condition of human behavior” and defines economics as “the science which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses,” or more recently Lipsey and Harbury (1990, 6–7), who state that “‘the central economic problem’ is . . . the allocation of scarce resources among competing uses for the satisfaction of consumers’ wants.” A key assumption is scarcity, which obliges individuals to make choices—individuals who, it is assumed, act rationally according to the values they hold in seeking to maximize on their options (Martin 1968, 1–5). It should be possible to assess these core postulates. In the first instance we can examine the existence of scarcity, as this is the cornerstone of the economic edifice built around peoples’ material needs and consequent need to make choices. If resources—or, in economic-speak, means—are not scarce, the assumptions that follow are void and economics inapplicable. In his study of the Tikopian economy, for example, Firth (1965) claims to demonstrate that resources are scarce and show that the Tikopia are aware of this with their population growing, putting increased pressure on certain resources, to such an extent that the chiefs sometimes issue edicts forbidding the use of some so as to encourage their conservation. This seems plausible for such a small Pacific island, particularly after witnessing the hurricane that recently devastated it; although it is not isolated but maintains relations with other islands. Is the availability of resources similarly limited in the center of the large island of New Guinea? This is a question addressed here, on the assumption that the applicability or otherwise of capitalist economic thought to the Wola depends on the answer. Even if we demonstrate that resources are scarce, this does not imply that we can directly apply economic principles to Wola life. While we might profitably use some formal economic principles to understand aspects of behavior, we cannot, as pointed out, expect an integrated model advanced to understand market arrangements to apply directly. But this does not imply that we cannot use certain formal economic concepts in our analysis of non-money-using subsistence orders. We may need to arrange our concrete data differently and deploy some other assumptions, yet perhaps “no radically different mode of thinking about the problems is required” (Firth 1965, 26). In his discussion of the choices people make when attempting to satisfy their wants in the face of scarce resources, Firth makes the point, together with others of his generation, such as Herskovits, Goodfellow, Nash, and Tax, who sought to apply microeconomic theory elsewhere, that consideration of economic concepts must be “infused by anthropological theory of society.”2 By which he intends that while, in his judgment, the assumptions about resources, wants, choices, and so on, made by economists in their formal analysis, are so broad that we can apply them to any society, we must also allow for the unique cultural settings that occur elsewhere, that is, accommodate these economic assumptions to alternative social arrangements to those in which these assumptions are

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embedded in capitalist society, or else we have little hope of appreciating the logic that guides choices between alternative scarce ends—the essence of economic behavior. This echoes the all-encompassing functionalist tenet popular at the time, subsequently enshrined as “holism” in anthropology. It is necessary to work in this wholesale way if we are going to have any hope of appreciating how others choose, which is crucial if we intend to apply capitalist-derived economic assumptions. Someone from another society may make what are for her perfectly rational choices when faced with alternatives, which to us, without knowledge of the norms and values that she has inherited from her culture and life experiences, may appear irrational, even stupid. Other considerations than material ones, such as kin relations or religious beliefs, can markedly influence the rationale of choices, for as Firth (1965, 355) neatly expresses it, “Economic relationships are also explicitly social relationships.” The previous chapter pointed out that in face-to-face communities, such as that of the Wola, people deal continually with relatives, whereas market economic transactions are largely impersonal (for example, I may never again see the bus conductor to whom I give my fare on the way home this evening). The social relationships between Wola actors inevitably condition their behavior and modify any economic calculations. A code of reciprocity informs social interaction, such that we cannot speak of material gain and profit motivating their transactional “economic” behavior to any extent; we have to allow for other factors, such as social obligations and the achievement of esteem through generosity. In his critique of the use of formal economic concepts outside capitalist society, Dalton (1961) takes the holistic premise further and argues that it is erroneous to seek to identify aspects of other cultures as relating to the “economy” because such institutions are inextricably interwoven into the whole social fabric and cannot be isolated without grave distortion. In this he reflects the assumption of many economists that the economy in market orders is somehow separate from the rest of society. This may be permissible as a conceptual device (economists have made considerable progress doing so, although sometimes at the expense of wider society, such as the pain of redundancy caused by the nostrums of monetarism), but it does not reflect reality, for any economy relates to wider social interaction. Recently, Bourdieu (2005, 3) has made this point in his market economy critique, restating the relevance of the holistic view in arguing that “because the social world is present in its entirety in every ‘economic’ action, we have to equip ourselves with instruments of knowledge which, far from bracketing out the mulitidimensionality and multifunctionality of practices, enable us to construct historical models capable of accounting, with rigour and parsimony, for economic actions and institutions as they present themselves to empirical observation.” Consequently, the market economy is as embedded in capitalist society as the “economy” is in any other, but economists assume that they know enough about it, because it is their society, by virtue of their membership, to take it for granted. Hence their theories are culturally and historically specific, and we should not expect them to apply unmodified elsewhere, although this does not imply that all associated ideas are inap-

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propriate. We find ourselves reaffirming the need to pinpoint clearly where other social orders, such as that of the Wola, differ from capitalist society, not expecting unmodified market economic formulations to apply but not jettisoning all related assumptions either before assessing them, for some may be applicable elsewhere, although possibly not in contexts familiar to us.

The Individual Individual interest is one such assumption central to classic economic theory that I controversially argue informs aspects of Wola behavior (Sillitoe 1979b). As the Nobel economist Amartya Sen (1990, 29) puts it, “The conception of man in economic models tends to be that of a self-seeking egoist.” The primacy formal economic thought accords individual self-interest in guiding humans in making rational choices to maximize on alternatives affords an opportunity to reappraise the Wola individual. The individualistic ethos is regularly to be seen in daily life: in horticultural arrangements, for instance, where gardening is largely a solitary activity (chapters 8 and 9). Similarly, men often build houses alone, calling on relatives to help with thatching only.3 This even extends to the building of structures for collective events, such as the paired longhouses to accommodate those attending sa dances and exchanges (Sillitoe 1979b, 271–72). Each person taking part accepted responsibility for sponsoring the collection of materials and erection of a section of one of the parallel longhouses, which sometimes resembled a gappy set of dentures facing one another across a communal grass clearing, as some erected their sections before others. After the event for which the buildings were erected, some people might reclaim the materials they had contributed to use elsewhere (for example, build a house or fence a garden) and anyone taking someone else’s would be challenged with theft. Such individualistic behavior is evident in the construction of other communal structures such as bridges. In her call for us to give more analytical interest to the individual, Douglas (1978, 4) cites such a case among the Kapauku: men turned up at a collapsed bridge to claim the wood they had contributed to it, which they carried off to use for something else, rather than repairing the bridge (Pospisil 1963a, 264). I witnessed a similar incident when someone with gardens on both banks of a river persuaded some relatives to help him erect a suspension bridge, only to find, after they had collected rattan vine and timber, that no one on the other side had gathered materials or was apparently interested in the project, so his relatives abandoned him, taking away again what they had contributed. The hapless gardener had to go it alone, slowly amassing the necessary materials on both banks, persuading some kin to help him with the erection when ready, which required people on both riverbanks (Sillitoe 1984). He subsequently treated the bridge as his property, threatening those outside his family who used it, although to little effect. When he ceased gardening on one side of the river, he lost interest and did nothing to maintain the bridge, which soon fell into disrepair.

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To view this image, please refer to the print version of this book.

Figure 2.1. Sa longhouse

To view this image, please refer to the print version of this book.

Figure 2.2. Constructing a vine suspension bridge across the Was River

The expression of individual interests can take extreme, even perplexing shape to a Westerner’s eyes. A nurse at Mendi was clearly baffled by people’s attitudes, recounting how she “had men refuse to carry a bucket of water for their own use in the dressingroom unless payment was named first. When I explained that their sores would be dressed for them they tossed their heads and walked off without carrying the water and without dressings,” clearly unconvinced that there was anything in sore dressings for them and unwilling to lend a hand without direct recompense (Walker 1952, 67). I have seen many similar episodes. The maintenance of medical aid posts and primary schools, which has depended on voluntary local labor, has proved a constant battle, for instance, as people can see no immediate personal benefit. Drawing attention to the individual has attracted some criticism. For example, A. M. Strathern (1988, 69) disapproves of any suggestion that we take “the individual” in some “axiomatic way . . . for granted as an autonomous reference point.” I disagree. The distinction “a single human being” (individual or person) and “more than one human being” (a social grouping) is one of the axioms that comprise the boundary of the Wola

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hermeneutic circle as I understand it (among others, such as the propensity of some persons to dominate others, the value placed on equality and personal autonomy, and so on). We all hold such assumptions to make sense of the world, although some social scientists may seek to obfuscate them in the apparent belief that to write mysteriously somehow gives authority. I think that all human beings, regardless of culture, distinguish between “me” and “us” and can perceive of the individual/group discrimination on some level; it is one of those propensities that we all share and can recognize in one another, which allow cross-cultural communication. In addition to routinely making singular and plural tense distinctions in speech, the Wola use several words that convey the distinction, such as hunguwm (alone) and momonuw (together), mbib (self ) and haeruw (with), and ol (man) or ten (woman) (qualified if necessary as bombort [one], which may gloss as “individual”) and sem (family) (qualified if necessary as g enk [small] or onda [large], which some might wish to gloss “subclan” and “clan”—see chapter 4). Those living in the Was Valley have a number of further concepts that clearly indicate that they have the idea of, and can talk about, the individual. In the biological sense they refer to individuals having a tokor (body), each person having her or his own body. And they have a range of terms for different parts of the anatomy, such that every individual has her or his own el (eyes), tombor (stomach), ongor (legs), and so on. They show considerable interest in the idea of the individual body; many of their ideas about health focus on it. People regularly talk about themselves and others in terms of their bodily condition, as a marker of well-being both physically outwardly and emotionally inwardly. Their comments focus particularly on the state of skin and hair. An individual with glossy firm skin and lustrous bouncy hair is fit and well, whereas someone with dull flabby skin and dry lifeless hair is sick and unwell. These markers of well-being regularly feature, for example, in men’s discourse on the consequences of female pollution, as discussed later (chapter 7). They do not only conceive of the individual in a biological way, they also conceive of him or her in a social way. Particularly significant in this regard are the Wola ideas of konay and konem. The former is the mind, intellect, conscience, will, even personality, while the latter is the konay in action, manifest in thoughts, wishes, desires, and intentions that emanate from the konay.4 All persons have their own konay located in the chest, and when they pursue certain courses of action, people may talk of them acting on mbinyon konem, that is, “their wishes, intentions, ideas” (depending on context). While every individual has her or his own konay and may behave according to its promptings and calculations, these are not unsocialized acts. All are brought up within and competent in the ways of their culture, its values and expectations informing their behavior. This may seem too obvious to demand comment, but I have paid a heavy misunderstanding price for assuming so previously. Others influence and shape one’s konay through life, and particularly influential in this respect are kinsfolk. Individual life experiences also mold it. Other concepts that indicate notions of the individual include wezow and towmow. Every person possesses these by definition, as they relate to being

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alive. The wezow is the life force, self-consciousness, or spirit that animates every person from birth. Unlike the konay it does not develop through life—you are born with it; it is what animates the person. It leaves the body at death and becomes a towmow, which is an ancestor spirit, ghost, spectral presence, or apparition that people believe are malevolent and may attack living kin, causing sickness and death. They are fearful things. There is perhaps some misunderstanding of the connotations of distinguishing between individual and collectivity. The implication is not that individuals are somehow independent of, or “prior to,” society; I agree with A. M. Strathern (1988, 93), for example, who comments, “The person is not axiomatically ‘an individual’ who, as in Western formulations, derives an integrity from its position as somehow prior to society.”5 Nor is the implication that people cannot conceive of social groups as single entities (one household of several persons, one troupe of dancers, or whatever). Indubitably they depend on their relations with others both to define their identities and to facilitate life generally as social beings (something conveyed in deploying social networks to show persons connected to one another, the complex obligations underlying sociopolitical exchange arrangements, and the like—Sillitoe 1979b, 86–103). As K. E. Read (1955, 275) put it some time ago for the Gahuku-Gama of the Eastern Highlands, there is no evidence that people “regard themselves or their fellows in a manner which is comparable to our own traditional view, as creatures who are endowed with a unique, objective and intrinsic value and an individuality which is distinct from the status they occupy, the roles they play and the system of relationships in which they live.”6 The inference is that such people have no abstract idea of the individual human being, instead thinking in terms of particular socially situated persons.7 It is difficult to see how this conceptual antinomy, of the socially networked or “multiple” person and the one group or singular “plurality” (A. M. Strathern 1988), makes the individual and collective distinction redundant.8 Both perspectives are evident in sociopolitical life in the Was Valley, as I seek to make clear with the self-interested and other-interested Melanesian individual, drawing attention to the individual with respect to political action, as particularly relevant regarding stateless autonomy and equality, with repercussions for “economic” relations. It is unfortunate that I espoused individualistic behavior among the Wola at a time when some right-wing Western governments were also championing the individual, spawning the term “Reaganomics” for the extreme application of monetarism then in vogue, because I suspect that it prompted more criticism than might have otherwise occurred, for supposedly introducing some Western idea of the individual into my interpretation of the Wola sociopolitical order.9 In another publication A. M. Strathern (1990, 212), for example, talks about the need “to free analysis of Melanesian ideas of personhood from the individual/society (‘group’) matrix by which it has been bedevilled,” and elsewhere she argued that we must “not conflate the construct” of the Melanesian person “with the ideological ‘individual’ of Western culture,” which we should see as “a particular cultural type (of person) rather than as a self-evident analyti-

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cal category itself ” (1981, 168).10 The sentiment that we should not conflate the Melanesian individual with the Western individual is unexceptionable; it would, after all, be to commit an ethnocentric blunder.11 But the assumption of economic theorists that selfinterest informs certain aspects of human behavior also has some relevance, I think, to the person I call here the “Melanesian individual”; it is one of those characteristics that we all share and can recognize in one another, which make anthropology possible at all and not akin to trying to fathom out the actions of complete aliens (such as I imagine working with the proverbial little green Martians would be like, if ever contacted). In support of her argument, A. M. Strathern (1981, 168) cites Dumont’s (1977) two meanings of “individual,” as either the “indivisible sample of mankind” or “a culturally constituted moral entity,” and distinguishes the former as the “individual” and the latter as “person.”12 In his introduction to a recent monumental handbook in economic anthropology, James Carrier (2005, 4–6) labels these two approaches the “individualist and systemic methodologies,” citing Malinowski’s work as an exemplar of the former and Durkheim’s the latter. This distinction may have some heuristic merit in certain academic contexts but in the real world human beings are both simultaneously by definition, which is how I conceive of the Melanesian individual. This accords with the views of others across the southwest Pacific (including Malinowski; see 1926, 28–32), where, as Morris (1994, 168) observes, “Recognition of the individual as a distinct, autonomous agent . . . co-exists with a sociocentric conception of the person.” The contrast is discernible in classical economic thought too, for as Levitt and Dubner (2006, 14) comment, “Smith’s true subject was the friction between individual desire and societal norms,” which is a neat way of putting the problem. In adopting a classical individual focus—“self-seekonomics,” in their punning spirit—they conclude that “if morality represents an ideal world, then economics represents the actual world” (206).13 It is certainly the “actual world,” informed by ideals and self-interest, that concerns this book, as central to ethnographic-determinism’s regard for evidence. So in this sense certainly, it is an economic study. Furthermore, it is unclear to me why the English term person should be thought more appropriate than individual to represent actors in New Guinea. Perhaps individual conjures up the maximizer of economic thought, reckoned beholden to market forces alone, which is certainly an inappropriate model, but on the other hand the association of person with psychological views is equally inappropriate, with their narrow focus on personality conditioning human behavior. Part of the answer, I suspect, is that person fits better with the collective sociological representations of human behavior that dominate anthropology, which I think are a “conflated construct” that gives a distorted representation of sociopolitical life in the New Guinea Highlands. It is only recently that “person” has come to indicate someone acting morally according to certain valueinformed norms and roles structured to accommodate others, and “individual” to indicate the capitalist free agent behaving self-interestedly and out to maximize his or her returns.14 The distinction is bogus in the sense that no one ever behaves strictly as such

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an individual because one is always a member of some wider social entity, a precondition of being human.15 I use the terms individual and person largely synonymously (they are equally distorting of what people say and how they behave, which is why I am specifying the Melanesian individual or person, in an attempt to create a little distance). But in an attempt to keep with current usage and avoid further unnecessary misunderstanding, I sometimes use individual to signal someone specifically calculating, probably selfinterestedly to some extent, within the “rules of the social game,” and person for those whose behavior generally complies with the “rules,” perhaps consciously to the benefit of all.16 In short, what I have in mind is a culturally inculcated freethinking being. It is my experience that Melanesian persons put more emphasis on individual freedom of action than we do in Western society. This stress is a direct consequence of living in a stateless polity. In Western states, we have considerably less autonomy. For example, as head of department I recently had to cajole my colleagues to take part in a central government–imposed QAA inspection, even though I thought it was a bureaucratic waste of time and damaging to morale, and subsequently we had to enter an RAE, another compulsory government exercise that we had to participate in, even though many of us believe that it is harming U.K. research.17 The government has forced my employer to oblige me to comply and I have no choice (other than to resign my post, which would achieve little if I continue living in my native land, for government intrudes in all fields of employment), whereas the Wola are not likewise coerced as individuals to engage in activities that they oppose. There are many other examples, such as the government taking nearly half my salary every month in taxes, which it uses to resource activities that I oppose in my name as a British citizen (such as conducting illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, funding an unaccountable European bureaucracy in Brussels, and so on), and enacting laws that restrict my freedom of action (for example, I work in a beautiful medieval city where house owners have many restrictions placed on them as to what they can and cannot do with their homes—they are not free to modernize them as they think fit). In contrast, the stateless Wola polity extends considerably more freedom of action to individuals, with no bodies ruling their lives, even to the extent of their not being obliged to show regular allegiance to any local groups. This is distinct from their having to meet obligations to kinspersons comprising networks of relations, some of whom reside in the same place, and who may occasionally serve as the locus of groups that come together to pursue joint activities. While rendering our notion of individual inappropriate, the greater stress that the Melanesian person puts on individual action suggests that some of the assumptions of formal economics should have relevance, particularly where they focus on self-interested maximization. It is in the economic realm, after all, that the West emphasizes individual action, as related in this book’s comments on capitalist economic theory and its supposition that we act selfishly to maximize our material and service returns. But this appears to apply to us as consumers largely, and again, relative to the Wola, our scope for individual action is markedly constrained, particularly if we

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are less well off. And as producers, many of us engage in occupations that markedly curtail our freedom of action, and which we find depressing and stressful to boot—such that given the opportunity (such as a lottery win), we would stop; a manager figure often tells us what to do (this applies to academics too; witness my QAA and RAE experiences) and what we are expected to achieve in a certain time, even obliging us to clock in and out to prove that we are at work. Such restrictions on individuals’ lives are unheard of in the Was Valley (although not beyond it, as labor migrants have discovered to their chagrin). A potential point of confusion, as pointed out, is that Western economists, as members of our society, take the socialized being for granted in focusing on individuals acting as individuals; Gudeman (1986, 45) talks about treating “the economy” as a “separate sphere of action founded upon a certain kind of behavior” (whereas “exotic models” reveal “fuzzy edges”). The implication is not that economists think Western individuals are asocial, only that they leave the social dimension to sociologists. We cannot make such assumptions where we find different value codes, although some critics accuse me of doing so, such as Geddes (1981, 116), for instance, who comments that “Sillitoe is commencing his analysis from the perspective of the isolated individual. That individual is self-interested and acts to fulfil needs and wants,” and Campbell (1981, 298), who talks of my work as “sterile formalism,” referring to the “banalities of the individual in Sillitoe’s analysis” due to my “atrophied concept of the social.” Such misplaced criticism would perhaps be less likely today, with several writers interested in the social individual, as evident, for instance, in the focus on actor-oriented analysis, particularly in development contexts where differences between members of communities have assumed significance in managing interventions (Long 1992, 2001; Benediktsson 2002). This approach focuses on the capacity of individual actors to influence what is going on around them, often talked about as “agency,” while simultaneously taking account of how the wider social context informs their individual strategies and choices.18 The Melanesian individual is more of an individual from a political-economic perspective than the Western individual, whatever our ideology. This prompts criticism of the baleful influence of French-derived collective sociology on our understanding of such orders, which portrays tribal people conforming mechanically or otherwise to tribal norms, their interests matching the clan’s and society’s interests under the guidance of some collective conscience (Hannerz 1989). This view finds clear expression in Durkheim, via whom it directly entered anthropology: “The lesser development of individuality, the limited extent of the group, the homogeneity of external circumstances, all contribute to reduce differences and variation to a minimum. The group realises in a regular manner an intellectual and moral uniformity . . . everyone behaves the same in the same circumstances and this conformity of behaviour can only translate from that of thought. All consciousness being drawn into the same swirl, the individual more or less melts into the generic” (1960, 7–8). Such assumptions pervade his en-

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tire argument: for instance, he asserts again later that the “primitive” is “conditioned to hold his individuality of little account” (383).19 We find a contemporary version in Bourdieu’s obscure ideas of “habitus” and “field.” The collective focus prompts him, for example, in his sociological critique of economics, to make the implausible suggestion that kin in “domestic economies” do not calculate in interactions with one another, which contrasts with capitalism’s individual focus, where “the spirit of calculation . . . gradually wins out in all fields of practice over the logic of the domestic economy, which was based on the repression, or more precisely the denial, of calculation: to refuse to calculate in exchanges between members of the household is to refuse to obey the principle of economy” (2005, 6). The corollary of arguing against this view is not that people lack ethical conventions and social morality. There is a code of values that informs social interaction, as evidenced in the complex of Wola exchange institutions, for instance, but it governs in a way that, from a political-economic perspective, individuals are afforded an extraordinary degree of autonomy, compared to those of us living in states, to act in ways that they think appropriate and in their interests. They do not calculate their interests selfishly as if asocial individuals but as kinspeople with responsibilities to relatives, and to ignore these is to incur disesteem, even aggression. They maneuver with respect to the moral conventions that inform their collective lives, no one having the authority to direct them, as opposed to seeking perhaps to influence them, as they may try in turn, as socially enmeshed persons, to influence others. In short, they are not the self-interested apparently free-floating individuals of formal economic thought but morally inculcated persons with an extraordinary degree of political autonomy. Capitalistic ideas of the individual have doubtless influenced my thinking, as pointed out in the previous chapter, for not only was I raised in a market society but also I compounded this inculcation by studying some courses in economics. Indeed, according to some commentators, the topic of individualism is a preoccupation of English academics. In his characterization of national traditions informing anthropology, Kuklick (1991, 279) notes that “anthropologists themselves, recognizing that they take their own culture’s obsessions into the field, have identified the solipsistic element in their work: the French find everywhere peoples who are prone to flights of philosophic speculation; the Americans show how interpersonal conflicts are eliminated in societies structured differently to their own; the British explore the limits of individual liberty and equality in the face of the obligations of citizenship.” And Dumont (1975, 338–39) comments that “the Anglo-Saxons . . . may be reproached . . . for seeing everywhere individuals in the modern sense of the term, people imbued with the values of liberty and equality and ignoring or devaluing those of order, interdependence, subordination, and hierarchy, or, as is predominantly our way, valuing tradition less than ‘relationality’ . . . the less they stir out of their metaphysical armchair, the more comfortably they remain encased within the fallacy that dominated the nineteenth century, once moral and political individualism had come to be confused with a description of social life.” This

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stereotype or, to use contemporary postmodern vocabulary, “essentialized” view of British anthropologists focusing on the individual intrigues me as a “native” because it is quite at odds with my own view. Other “natives” agree, such as Mary Douglas (1978, 5), who, in promoting her grid-group analysis of social interaction, notes that a “source of our troubles as cultural anthropologists is that we have no adequate conception of the individual.” My perception is that it is America, not Britain, that is home to the rugged individualist,20 who can legally bear arms to defend his rights and freedom, where interest in equality is, as one commentator puts it, a “civic religion” (Salzman 1999, 56). Furthermore, the political egalitarianism, individual sovereignty, and reciprocal relations exemplified in exchange, which I see so prominent in Wola social life, have intriguing parallels with the values expressed in the French Revolution slogan of “equality, liberty, and fraternity.” This is not to deny that interests originating in EuroAmerican culture inform our work, as mentioned previously, but it is to refute the charge that my identification of individual autonomy in the New Guinea Highlands is explicable, or worse, dismissible, on the grounds that I am an Englishman. The contributions of Americans to social transaction debates bear this out, and are of interest here with the emphasis the Wola put on exchange, suggesting novel ways to view this behavior, taken up later (chapter 12). In his textbook on social exchange theory, Ekeh (1974) classifies the American approach as individualistic in orientation, in contrast to the French collectivistic one. In developing his theory of social exchange, for instance, the sociologist George Homans (1958, 1961) boldly, though somewhat questionably, combines concepts from psychology and economics, with a farrago-like equation of principles from both—for instance, punishment and reinforcement (psychology) with cost and profit (economics). He concludes, from the propositions he generates, that “no exchange continues unless both parties are making a profit” (1961, 61), which is an obscure way of saying that individuals will not, if they can avoid it, interact with those who “cost” them too much to make it “rewarding” or “profitable.” In respect of psychological assumptions, I should add by way of an aside that my focus on the individual does not signal a concern for individual cognition rather than human relations, as some commentators suggest (Campbell 1981, 298; Gregory 1997, 15), but a concern for individual relations and action within the political-economic parameters of the acephalous Was Valley, which afford a new twist to laissez-faire.21 Peter Blau (1964, 1968), a contemporary of Homans, takes Homans’s proposition that individuals enter into social exchange transactions to “profit” from others a step further, arguing that they aim not to reward them so much as take advantage of them. When they have something of particular value to offer, individuals exploit it to gain influence, even power over other persons, who, if they do not concede this—as respect, admiration, and so on to reward interaction—will lose out because they withdraw from the transaction without having received adequate returns.22 Only a few anthropologists have picked up on these ideas foregrounding individualism in social interaction; one is Fredrik Barth (1966)—a Norwegian (!)—who allows for individual maneuver in transactional con-

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texts in Europe, although puzzlingly, he makes little reference to the individual in his New Guinea work (1975) with a Mountain Ok population.23

The Melanesian Individual It has proved a somewhat lonely endeavor to get individuals accorded the analytical place that I think they demand in New Guinea Highland society. My Ph.D. supervisor, I recall, thought that I was a theoretically hopeless case for harping on about the individual (bear in mind that this was Cambridge, where Meyer Fortes’s Talmudic account of the descent-structured office-arranged Tallensi strongly influenced a generation of anthropologists—regardless of Leach’s awkward querying of differences between behavior and rules). Until, that is, he heard Mary Douglas’s Frazer lecture, for I well remember his astonishment that I should, quite independently, have been arguing similar points to such a distinguished scholar in her individual-group grid formulation (Douglas 1978). But it has continued to be an eccentric argument to make, going in the opposite direction to received wisdom on tribal societies throughout the twentieth century which, following early French sociology—which has heavily influenced British anthropology (see below)—places emphasis on collective action and group allegiance, moral persons and normative behavior. It brings to mind a school experience when I was the only one to put my hand up in a physics lesson regarding the possible outcome of a certain resistance arrangement in an electric circuit, and was right; I can still hear old Nixon saying, “Good, stick to your guns, Sillitoe”—and I am still. But I am not entirely alone—indeed, I find myself in some good company. Others have pointed to the prominence of the individual in Melanesian social interaction, although we have not advanced far in establishing for individualism the analytical place it demands. Long ago Bronislaw Malinowski referred to the significance of self-interest in Trobriand society, commenting, “In this and in all the manifold activities of economic order, the social behavior of natives is based on a well-assessed give-andtake, always mentally ticked off and in the long run balanced. . . . The free and easy way in which all transactions are done, the good manners which pervade all and cover any hitches or maladjustments, make it difficult for the superficial observer to see the keen self-interest and watchful reckoning which runs right through” (1926, 26–27).24 There is again a strange contradiction—two-author-like, as noted in the previous chapter— between this depiction of self-interested Trobriand behavior and his previous book (1922), which puts community interests to the fore, arguing in the context of the annual yam harvest exchange (urigubu) against the economists’ notion of “economic man.”25 Here Malinowski struck an early blow in the battle over the relevance of Western economic theory to such societies, asserting that it has no relevance at all, and talking about exploding this “fanciful, dummy creature” that distorts interpretations with an “imaginary primitive man prompted in all his actions by a rationalistic conception of self-interest” (60). In a sense he intriguingly turns the self- versus collective-interest di-

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chotomy inside out, equating self-interest with social interaction and collective interest with economic calculations, something that I shall pick up on later. The social group, as opposed to the individual, became increasingly prominent in the mid-twentieth century with the advent of segmentary lineage theory. An early challenger of its hegemony was Lawrence (1984), who spoke of the Garia social order in terms of individuals from whom social ties radiated to form a “security circle.” According to A. M. Strathern (1994, 205, 207), his account was “a scandal” when first put forward in 1950, emphasizing self-interest and pragmatism, of which “social conformity, he alarmingly stated, is mere by-product” (again, somewhat a point-scoring exaggeration). In the New Guinea Highlands, K. E. Read early noted a streak of individuality among the Gahuku-Gama, commenting that “people are markedly aware of themselves as individuals. They possess a strong feeling for or awareness of what I shall later refer to as the idiosyncratic ‘me,’ and the majority of social situations reveal a high degree of ego involvement.” And he went on to observe a “tendency to describe and assess each situation in terms of the subject’s own involvement” (1955, 254).26 At the other end of the cordillera, Leopold Pospisil (1963a, 1963b) stressed the importance of individual autonomy in Kapauku society, drawing direct parallels with capitalism, even going so far as to call cowrie shells “money” and talking about market sales and paid labor. He writes, for instance, about the “capitalistic features of the Kapauku economy, such as the existence of true money, savings and speculation . . . combined with a strong indigenous version of individualism” (1963b, 29). While I question such direct parallels with market behavior, the observation that while “several persons may work on the same project, their tasks are so defined that the contribution of an individual is readily perceivable and separable from that of others” (31) resonates with my observations of Wola behavior, as evident in the parallels between the bridge-building episodes. In his work with the Dani living to the east, Anton Ploeg (1969, 69) also draws attention to the prominence they accord individual action. In a thought-provoking paper, Roy Wagner (1974) questioned the propriety of talking about group allegiance governing social interaction and instead presupposed individual calculation, suggesting that groups are “a function of our understanding of what” people did “rather than of what they themselves made of things” (97). I weighed in (Sillitoe 1979b) with my argument, reviewed again here, that individual calculation features significantly in Wola social interaction, mediated through sociopolitical exchange institutions, championing the “competitive sociability of institutionalized exchange individualism.” In the Eastern Highlands, Pataki-Schweizer (1980) noted the significance of the individual in social life, talking about “the relation between individual decisions and the sociobiological milieu which provides the context for behavior” (13). And Daryl Feil (1984; see also 1987, 252–60), in his investigation of exchange among the Enga, notably the grand tee institution, also argued for the importance of an analytical perspective that accords centrality to the individual, writing, “Individual-centered alliances are the most important units involved in tee-making . . . while tee networks

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are composed of ego-centered, maximizing, manipulating individuals, tee relationships also have a highly constraining, moral component” (1984b, 10).27 More recently, A. J. Strathern and Stewart (2000) have accorded the individual a prominent place in their understanding of Western Highland society—in their “relational-individual” formulation—observing that individuals behave “in ways designed to advance their own interests at the expense or, regardless of, or making use of, others, and they make their decisions to do this” (7).28 The reciprocally focused Melanesian individual that I have in mind is quite different from the capitalist Euro-American individual. The Was Valley individual is not a maximizing materialist, which is a significant point of difference with the assumptions of classic economic theory, critically setting him or her off from the Western individual. The Wola do not seek to demonstrate success by accumulating material assets such as land and capital, displaying their wealth in large houses furnished with expensive antique furniture, wearing expensive designer clothes and precious jewelry, riding in chauffeur-driven limousines, and amassing valuable share portfolios and fat bank accounts. They measure social standing in exactly the reverse, by what people give to others during their lives, not what they can hoard to themselves (Sillitoe 1979b, 143; Lederman 1986a, 13–14). They are not material maximizers but reciprocal maximizers. The “economic” implications are profound, as this study seeks to demonstrate, querying the applicability of our concept of economy and associated economic assumptions to the Wola to reveal how Melanesian individualism is wholly different from that of capitalism.29 All live at the same material level and seek to obtain valued things above subsistence needs to give away in sociopolitically, not economically, motivated exchange. This has far-reaching consequences for the “economy.” It would be like us obtaining large amounts of food, electrical goods, footwear, or whatever and then giving them to kin not to use or consume necessarily but to reaffirm social relations with them and those from whom we obtained the items. Our gift purchasing is considerably more modest, only comprising a tiny proportion of the total volume of our economic transactions. This I think is one reason that we have such trouble appreciating the “economic” implications of sociopolitical exchange. Roughly comparable transactions feature negligibly in our lives and consequently our capitalistic economic model hardly considers them—and, blinkered as a result, we have trouble comprehending their import. Subsistence production is largely a domestic affair, rarely involving more persons than those who make up a single household, where the social obligation to share is developed to such an extent that any differences in individual enterprise are largely erased in real terms. Furthermore, although food production is largely undertaken on an individual household basis, with each domestic unit responsible for its own gardens and most of the work needed in them, the consumption of produce is not necessarily restricted to the household growing it (Sillitoe 1983). While individuals secure most of their food from their own gardens, they share a considerable amount with others. The effect is to spread out what is produced, evening out any disparities between house-

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holds. This is particularly evident when people consume pork. The herding of pigs is again an individual endeavor, each animal being one woman’s responsibility, and representing a considerable household investment (Sillitoe 2003). But when a pig is slaughtered, the pork is distributed to and consumed by many people.30 The redistribution that results largely evens out differences between households. The more successful ones that slaughter and cook more animals consume similar amounts of pork per head. Indeed, the men heading such households sometimes run their families short in their attempts to bolster their reputations (311). The leveling effected by this sharing is expectable in an egalitarian society where the individual basis of production could give rise to certain inequalities between households. The exchange ethic, so deeply engrained into the Wola character, ensures that no family markedly outstrips any other. Those who produce more willingly part with any surplus to achieve renown and a marginal degree of influence, with no idea of hoarding it in the capitalist spirit to improve their productive capacity or standard of living above others. Those who give away the most are reckoned to be successful, not those who possess the most or reinvest it to increase their productive capabilities.31 One aspect of capitalist accumulation is that it is not only an outward demonstration of success but also a manifestation of power: indeed, a way to exert it, as Marx observed long ago, because it results in some controlling more assets than others, often considerably more—including the productive assets of land and capital. The individual finds her- or himself locked into a set of hierarchical relations with a few rich powerful people and many poor powerless ones. Again, the Wola individual lives in an opposite culture, one that esteems equality, where all are equally wealthy (or poor) and power is diffused between all, not concentrated in a few hands. It is critical to note—following Firth’s point that we need to infuse the use of any economic principles with an anthropological awareness of different social contexts—that New Guinea individualism is embedded in a markedly egalitarian social context. Dumont (1977, 4) rightly points out how a focus on the individual may be associated with the ideals of equality and liberty (see also Holmes [1990], who argues that self-interest came to prominence in Europe because of its egalitarian and democratic connotations), but wrongly asserts that these occur only in Euro-American society.32 My understanding of New Guinea Highlands life is that it contrives to give these values more substance than we do. The occurrence of these values in a subsistence-based egalitarian sociopolitical order, not a market-manipulated hierarchical one where a few winners take a disproportionate share of gross domestic product, has profound implications. These have long fascinated me, and another answer that I sometimes give to the “What are you doing?” question mentioned in the previous chapter, is that I am endeavoring to understand how the Wola contrive an orderly nonhierarchical social environment while esteeming individual political freedom highly and asserting the equality of all. In his account of the creed of the innovative Summerhill school, A. S. Neill (1971, 112, 309)33 catches something of the Wola ethic, far better than any account of capitalist economic values: “Freedom means doing what you like, as long

To view this image, please refer to the print version of this book.

Figure 2.3. Late afternoon, and a woman has tethered her pigs along the fence adjacent to her house

To view this image, please refer to the print version of this book.

Figure 2.4. At a pig kill at Ungubiy, men remove hot stones from earth oven

To view this image, please refer to the print version of this book.

Figure 2.5. Cutting up cooked pork at pig kill prior to distribution

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as you don’t interfere with the freedom of others. The result is self-discipline.” Nonetheless, “There isn’t such a thing as absolute freedom. . . . No one can have social freedom, for the rights of others must be respected. But everyone should have individual freedom.” The centrality the Wola acephalous social order accords personal autonomy, nobody able to occupy an authoritative office and direct the activities of others, and its militant egalitarianism differentiates it significantly from market states to which formal economic ideas apply and, we should anticipate, considerably modifies their applicability, if any.

The Corporate Person The promotion of the individual has attracted some attention in debates on the Melanesian region (albeit not always acknowledged as such), some responding critically to defend the normative person and reassert the “collective conscious” perspective, arguing that group allegiance and solidarity are central to New Guinea Highlands society (A. M. Strathern 1981, 1988, 1990; Lederman 1986b; Merlan and Rumsey 1991; Wiessner and Tumu 1998). We find a stark expression of this view in Lea (1997, 4), who contrasts “holistic societies” with “individualistic societies,” maintaining that “Melanesian cosmology expresses itself in an implicit Melanesian axiology, one which finds its basis in the idea of community and whose ethical implications will be seen to impose severe restrictions on the ideas of autonomous and self-interested behavior” (citing de Coppet’s 1990 assertion that society is the “ultimate value for Melanesians”). These ideas, representing the mainstream of British anthropology, originate as noted with early French sociology, notably that of L’année sociologique (particularly influential in New Guinea are Durkheim’s work on social cohesion and, in a literal line of descent, his nephew Mauss’s on the gift). It is ironic that these ideas have more informed anthropology than those of the French revolutionary slogan, mentioned above, of “equality, liberty, and fraternity,” which so much better catches the values central to stateless orders. The dominance of this sociological school in British anthropology (which became a virtual subdiscipline of sociology) has resulted in a focus on the social collective at the expense of the social individual; as Sahlins observes in his counterpoint to Western philosophy’s “recurrent attempt to make individual need and greed the basis of sociability,” the “British structural-functionalists” proceeded to “sublimate egotistical man in social institutions” that in turn “responded to social needs” (1996, 398–99). There were several reasons for this sociological trend, not least that it supplied a coherent paradigm to take on social evolutionary views. An interest in the individual also opened the doors to psychology, eschewed for good reasons because much psychological theory, culturally specific like that of economics, is difficult to apply convincingly cross-culturally, and often involves inappropriate research in artificial settings, as illustrated in Homans’s (1961) dubious use in his social exchange theorizing of results from experiments on pigeons.

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According to these French social philosophers, small-scale social orders value community interests. The morality of collective concerns, expressed in norms, guides the behavior of moral persons. This emphasis on group expectations and conventional behavior is at odds with the idea of the self-calculating individual. Dumont (1975, 338) summarizes the difference succinctly: “The comparison of modern with non-modern societies turns on two contrary configurations of value. For us, man is an individual, the individual subject as an end in himself; for non-modern societies, it is to a large extent the society, the collective man, to which the individual is referred.” The implication is that a focus on the individual is inappropriate, even ethnocentric, as New Guinea Highland society should have a collective focus, as supposedly do all other small-scale noncapitalist societies.34 But this view is equally ethnocentric (especially as the French philosophers who originated it never visited such people). Why should “nonmodern” cultures not afford the individual room to maneuver too, not only the “modern” West, except that this upsets entrenched assumptions about social evolution, which contend that individualism only comes with industrial/urban society?35 Others have questioned this sweeping assumption previously but to little effect. For instance, Malinowski (1926, 48) retorted derisively to Hartland’s assertion that the tribal focus “is not the individual, but the kin. The individual is but part of the kin,” by pointing out, “Within the nearest kinship group rivalries, dissensions, the keenest egotism flourish,” subsequently going on to talk about “exploding” the myth of “solidarity within the group related by direct descent.”36 And many decades later, A. P. Cohen (1994, 14) argued strongly against the idea that the “individual is a peculiarly Western concern,” saying that this fallacy results from the conflation of individuality with individualism. The privileging of society as the concept of analysis led, he points out, to an anthropology where individuals became passive and incidental, even invisible, when we know that they are active, creatively interpreting and contributing to social arrangements. The lack of effect of advocacy for the individual puzzles me. After all, the collective focus resulted in the New Guinea Highlands descent group affair. The continued support of the moral person and group allegiance perspective is difficult to comprehend following this controversy.37 While descent “theory” in New Guinea has more creases than a secondhand suit, and looks as disheveled, many continue to support its corporate fashions. It is not my intention to deny that the descent-framed descriptions of some ethnographers are inconsistent with a recognition of the individual’s role in social processes, nor that the recognition of big men resulted in a significant modification of the segmentary descent model, only that the model is inapplicable to what I have seen in the Was Valley. Initially, ethnographers mechanistically applied the ascendant unilineal descent paradigm (Fortes 1953), imposing the agnatic genealogical tree to carve up Highlands populations into clans, lineages, and so on (Meggitt 1965; Ryan 1955, 1959; Berndt 1962). But the disconcerting lack of fit between agnatic ideology and behavior soon became evident and led to various reformulations to accommodate the perceived flexibility—read ignoring of supposed normative rules—of Highlands social orders (Langness 1964; de

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Lepervanche 1967–68). One influential, if brief, contribution suggested that “cumulative patrifiliation” better described Highlands arrangements than patrilineal descent (Barnes 1962), and another, far more extensive contribution argued for a distinction between, on the one hand, filiation as a recruitment principle by which people regulate group composition, applying paternal connections rule-like to define membership, and on the other hand, descent as an ideology of corporate unity by which they conceive of the structure and solidarity of local groups, making statements about them couched in idioms suggestive of descent constructs (A. J. Strathern 1969, 1972). Another intriguing contribution suggested reversing the accepted emphasis, with transaction and not consanguinity defining groups (determining children’s paternal affiliation), and kinship, not exchange (of women in the orthodox descent model), relating them together (Wagner 1967), a view that subsequently led, as mentioned, to questioning the existence of groups altogether. Meanwhile, others have continued to use the segmentary agnatic descent scheme to structure their ethnographic accounts, albeit with circumspection (S. Robbins 1982; Goldman 1983; Josephides 1985; LiPuma 1988; O’Hanlon 1989: 23–25; Wohlt 2004). Yet each effort to iron out shortcomings seems to add disconcerting new wrinkles, virtually destroying the integrity of any descent constructs. One attempt to resolve the corporate group versus individual actor imbroglio, and reaffirm the collective moral person view of descent-constituted groups, proposes that we see formal public exchanges of wealth structuring relations between groups and informal private lending as constituting relations between individuals (Lederman 1986b).38 There are some ethnographic problems in the Was Valley with this discrimination (founded on fieldwork in the Mendi Valley among people who speak a dialect of the same language), in that persons may borrow informally (saen in Wola) from close relatives, with whom they have no reason to create purported special relationships through such private loan transactions.39 They borrow from any relative or friend who has the resources and is willing to lend to them (Sillitoe 1979b, 248–55). Furthermore, some formal exchanges may, like informal loans, involve two individuals only; for example, when a newborn dies, the father alone may make a gwat mortuary payment to his fatherin-law, and often the ol tobway/ol bay mortuary exchange sequence takes place between two men only. Also, I continue to think that to interpret public exchanges, in which men act together, as descent-constituted group acts (literally or idiomatically), under the leadership of a dominant person, misrepresents people’s actions at such events. In the Was Valley, I have not heard talk of the Sugarcane clan transacting with the Flying Fox clan, nor have I heard “big men” leading such “clan” groups, which is not to deny that successful men may have some influence with kin.40 Persons take part as individuals enmeshed in complex networks of kin relations, acknowledging implied responsibilities and obligations. Public exchange transactions, to use an analogy, are similar to weddings in England where relatives give presents that are sometimes displayed for all to see, to which the best man (big man–orator equivalent) may make reference in his speech, but no one thinks certain groups of relatives (for example, the groom’s or bride’s kin,

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or siblings) have donated; all know that certain individuals and couples have made the gifts. These comments hopefully make it clear why I disagree with those such as A. J. Strathern and Stewart (2005, 240) who think that I document “similar processes” to Rena Lederman (that is, discriminate between intergroup clan contexts and interpersonal partnerships in understanding various interactional sequences).41 A more influential attempt to reaffirm the moral person above the maneuvering individual focuses broadly on social identity issues, maintaining that the “distributive character” of morality (K. E. Read 1955, 260) or the idea of “partible personhood” or the “dividual” best represents Melanesian social conceptions (A. M. Strathern 1988). The argument is dense but clearly has roots in collective normative sociology, eschewing talk of individuality: “A group of men or a group of women will conceive of their individual members as replicating in singular form (‘one man’, ‘one woman’) what they have created in collective terms (‘one men’s house’, ‘one matrilineage’). In other words, a plurality of individuals as individuals (‘many’) is equal to their unity (‘one’)” (A. M. Strathern 1988, 14). The “dividual,” while a singular person, is a composite of the relationships that produce (meet in) her or him, relationships that have a strong moral, norm-laden content (see Graebner [2001, 35–47], who traces the ideas back to Mauss; also Mallett 2003, 18–25).42 The “fractal person” proposed by Wagner is a similarly conceived being who is “never a unit standing in relation to an aggregate, or an aggregate standing in relation to a unit, but always an entity with relationship integrally implied” (1991, 163).43 The “corporatism takes precedence over individualism” argument currently advocates a relational view of behavior, arguing that Melanesians do not think that individuals have invariant characters but rather take on qualities from the network of relations with which they interact. The relations they enter into inform their persons. Sociality is immanent from this perspective, persons constantly negotiating preexisting, ongoing relations as “partible composites.” Male and female characteristics, for instance, apparently belong less to individuals than the prevailing social milieu, which attributes these to persons in different ways under various circumstances. It has recently been labeled, somewhat confusingly, the “new Melanesian ethnography” ( Josephides 1991; Foster 1995; Scott 2007; Bamford and Shaffner 2008), when it boils down to arguing that we are all born into a social environment and those we interact with influence our views, behavior, and so on. Although I have never heard Wola talk about “sociality” like this in the abstract, their conduct evidences an awareness of the influence of others: for instance, their transactional behavior shows the importance they invest in their networks of relations. Furthermore, the “new Melanesian ethnography” features a considerable amount of library-bound reinterpretation of old ethnographic data (such as myths, rituals, exchange institutions, kinship practices, and the like); no one has yet adduced new ethnographic evidence that unambiguously confirms such abstract relational views, rather they are based on reimagining the ideological possibilities of existing ethnography, or at least that which can be turned to the “partible-fractal person” end. This “new

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interpretation of Melanesian ethnography” imagines what unvoiced ideas, for example, of society, might look like if people spoke them and the implications for sociological understanding,44 and at its ultrarelativistic extreme argues that there is no way we can express analogous concepts they hold and we do not, assuming that we can know them at all. As Wagner (2001, 45) puts it for the mortuary complex of the Barok of New Ireland, “The whole is perceived, not articulated, but perceived through the very impossibility of forming the perception around a discrete figure or object or of an assemblage of objects, or even of making a figure of the totality.” In this event “ethnographicdeterminism” is one way forward: close attention to what people do and say, and not current preoccupation with our meanings and interpretations. While a collective ethic that encourages individuals largely to see their interests constituted by those with whom they have relations as a group may apply to some small acephalous populations—widely characterized as hunter-gatherers—and an egalitarian social environment exist, I find this difficult to conceive for larger populations. It is relatively easy to understand how these sparse populations might esteem such collective values, as the social group—the band—is little more than an extended family of a few tens of persons (Woodburn 1982). They differ in some further significant regards from denser populations. They are highly mobile and able to limit attempts to impose control on them by moving on. They discourage competition and circulate goods in such a way as to limit group interdependence. They are mostly disinterested in property. Subsistence often features immediate, not delayed, returns, widely seen as truly a “hand to mouth” existence, although often it features a mix. There are some parallels with denser acephalous populations. Individuals have direct access to resources. They also have equal access, if necessary, to means of coercion. They place a high value on sharing, which inhibits surplus accumulation. It was using ethnography on such social orders that many early sociologists advanced their moral collective interpretation of “nonmodern” societies (for example, Durkheim’s influential work drew heavily on the then new Australian Aboriginal ethnography, praised by Frazer). The Wola population, on the other hand, numbers thousands. Hundreds of bandsized groups—households of kin—interact daily in the Was region. The issue of political order in such a context, especially when combined with a fiercely egalitarian ethic, presents considerable challenges. The Wola value individual sovereignty highly, allowing persons considerable latitude to decide their own actions. This makes them suspicious, even jealous, of surrendering too much of their personal autonomy to any group, which could be dangerous in that some persons or party may secure some control over the collective body and undermine equal relations, even seek to exert power over its members, infringing on their equality. Or alternatively, the consensus of the group might be to act in a way that some judge not in their best interests and they may wish to disassociate themselves from it. We can see how becoming too dependent on membership of any clanlike group could be disadvantageous for people who esteem equality. Collective identity with an extended family does not carry such dangers, where

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informal hunter-gatherer-like mechanisms are sufficient to subvert domination, beyond adults perhaps intervening in the behavior of children and adolescents. Some argue that the emphasis on equality, as a core Highlander value, is in error because persons differ, according to age and gender, if nothing else, such that a young woman finds herself in a different position than a mature man ( Josephides 1985; Kelly 1993; Jolly 1987). The implication is that persons cannot be equal. This is to associate equality with sameness; as Salzman (1999, 42) points out, by taking differences such as those of “strength, energy, astuteness, luck, fierceness, fertility and many more . . . everyone, everywhere, could be deemed ‘unequal.’” Persons do not have to be the same to enjoy political equality. They can be equal and different ( Josephides 1983): a crucial distinction. The point is that such differences do not support a hierarchy of differential relations among the Wola, some above others. It is in the sense of political sovereignty that I use the term egalitarian, where no persons are able to dominate others, having power over them. All have equal rights to freedom of action within the mores of their culture. It may occur that personal relations are asymmetrical—some men bully their wives, and some women scold their husbands—but beyond a certain point they can withdraw from an irksome relationship. A woman may return to her father, brothers, or other close consanguineal kin, knowing that they will defend her rights if she is abused by her husband, which can prove embarrassing and costly for him if they demand some wealth from him as a show of good faith in their affinal relationship (Sillitoe 2003, 298– 99). A man may withdraw to the company of male kin in a men’s house and largely avoid a tiresome wife. Even children, when sufficiently independent of their mothers, may move in with other kin if someone at home is too domineering, and adolescents, at a time of life when parents can prove particularly embarrassing and interfering, regularly move out for periods. And while the talents of some persons may secure them a degree of influence in certain contexts, this is limited and does not translate into authority. The presence of young and old, capable and less able individuals brings us to individual variation, which is critical to the argument advanced here against the dominance of the collective sociological perspective.

Individual Variation The distance we have wandered away from recognizably economic matters indicates the extent to which we need to modify conventional assumptions about issues such as individualism and scarcity to make these relevant to Was Valley behavior. This apparent digression also situates us with respect to sociological perspective, notably in contrasting the individual actor with the moral person, a distinction critical to understanding the political economy. Choice is another key assumption in the definition of economics. It further reveals the inadequacy of the “collective-interests” approach to social interaction in small-scale societies, the normative assumptions of which hold out the prospect of explaining, even predicting, how persons make decisions. The expecta-

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tion that we can generalize sufficiently about behavior to identify norms that account entirely for how people make choices sits uneasily with observed actions. Again, this is not a new observation; we have long known, for instance, that the standard accounts of how different kin categories should behave toward one another—parents toward children, mother’s brothers and sister’s sons, cross- and parallel-cousins, and so on—are fictions and that actual behavior can evidence wide variation from normative expectations. In his rejoinder to Murdock’s (1951) early scathing commentary on British anthropology’s close association with such sociology, Firth (1951a, 479) conceded, Where comes recognition of the effects of individual choice and decision? . . . when generalizations are made about more abstract complexes of social behavior, then significant variation is much more probable. Propositions about identification of siblings, unity or integration of the lineage group, reciprocity between kin are of this order. . . . Scientific accuracy demands then that propositions about them should be tested for homogeneity . . . unverified assumptions damp down inquiry into the issue of how far personal variation is in itself relevant. One way of avoiding difficulties in tests of homogeneity is to claim that generalizations cannot be concerned with the particular, the variant. But empirical evidence must show first what is the rule. Another way is to argue that since the generalization is the personal construction of the observer, he is abstracting from reality, not portraying reality. But there is still the need to test constantly against reality. Otherwise, social anthropology becomes merely the handling of theoretical models.45 Although we have come a long way from Durkheim’s discredited idea of “mechanical solidarity” characterizing “nonmodern” societies, the associated collective conscience legacy lives on. A focus on the individual reveals the inadequacies of normative approaches, which fail to account for the considerable variation that we find in human behavior. We encounter variability at the outset in the Janus-faced nature of behavior discussed in this chapter, where humans are both selfish and other-regarding in their actions. We find that individuals vary in their self-interestedness and community spiritedness, which relates to some interesting questions, such as why some individuals are criminals (self-seeking) while others are law abiding (community minded). There is much debate over the reasons for such variability, whether it has a genetic basis, depends on infant experiences, is informed by family values, results from life experiences, and so on, which takes us into questions of human biology and psychology that relate to the enduring nature versus nurture debate and are beyond the scope of this book. It is the existence of such variability that is of interest here. The idea that there is a collectively agreed meaning to all aspects of cultural life that an investigator can divine by analysis of symbols and discourse is problematic. Different persons may have different understandings of behavior and of symbols that may relate to it. My mother-in-law, for example, is a gnome lover and has several placed prominently around her garden—digging, wheelbarrowing, sheltering under mushroom umbrellas, smiling, and waving—which she thinks are first-rate ornaments that

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add something to her flower beds. My parents have a gnome that they obtained as a lucky leprechaun in the Irish town from where my mother’s paternal grandmother originated, whom she remembers with great affection, and for them it is an auspicious mascot at the front gate. My wife and I have a gnome too, a present from my motherin-law, who thought that it would look nice in our garden; he is fishing with a rod and is carefully concealed in the reeds on the edge of our pond, and we have christened him Elfin after an unpopular angling enthusiast acquaintance named Elvin. After my brother made some backhanded compliments about Elfin, we gave him a gnome as a birthday present, which, serving as a garage doorstop, is now rather battered, having been run over several times. Gnomes clearly offer wide scope for metaphorical play and signify quite different things to members of our family. An imaginary reversal of roles is further chastening with respect to what we think we know and our comparative method. I am not sure what Wola ethnographers would make of garden gnomes. They might draw a parallel with ancient stone artifacts (figures, mortars, pestles, club heads) found occasionally in their region and subsequently carefully conserved (sometimes, gnomelike, adjacent to gardens). They believed ancestor spirits dwelled in them. Missionaries armed with sledgehammers subsequently smashed them up to mark their conversion from heathen to Christian ways—an urge that some persons, such as my brother, have when they see garden gnomes. The comparison’s incongruence echoes the dissonance we sense applying formal economic assumptions elsewhere. Individual variation is everywhere. It has recently become evident, for instance, in local knowledge and participatory research in development, which started off with normative assumptions but soon found these wanting because when encouraged to participate in decision making, people show an alarming tendency to contest issues, sometimes hotly, which has renewed interest in conflict resolution. These comments on individual variation are reflected in Arendt’s (1998, 8) self-evident comment, “Plurality is the condition of human action because we are all the same, that is, human, in such a way that nobody is ever the same as anyone else who ever lived, lives, or will live.” And in the context of moka exchange in the Western Highlands of New Guinea, A. J. Strathern and Stewart (2000, 15) have recently referred to individuals who “creatively and variably constitute themselves” within relational frameworks. The focus on normative behavior, and claims to be able to talk about the collective meaning of behavior, increasingly appears a fiction, and the collective conscience a chimera. We have the “variable individual” in contrast to the “moral person.” This is an emerging weakness of twentieth-century social anthropology, currently voiced as criticism of “essentialist” or stereotypical views of “others.”46 We can turn such criticism around, too. The inevitability of variation questions comparisons made by various writers throughout this chapter to “Western” society, as if this comprises a uniform set of cultural, economic, and political values, when we know that the West is a large, varied, and changeable social category.47 The focus on the normatively conditioned, moral person is likely to prove with hindsight one of the discipline’s greatest shortcomings, as we increasingly seek to

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accommodate the variability that characterizes human behavior. It is a flaw that I have progressively become aware of, as the extent of the variation that characterizes Wola behavior and knowledge has dawned on me, and I have become conscious of my limited ability to deal with it. It is apparent that collective assumptions and faith in abstract customary behavior are inadequate to capture sociocultural reality. The methodological implications are large. It will be necessary to document the pioneering of ten or twenty different gardens with different families (chapter 8), the manufacture of a dozen or more examples of objects by different artisans (Sillitoe 1988), and so on, to have any genuine hope of encompassing it. It implies a team of researchers, necessitating close attention to associated problems such as extent of interference to a local community and degree to which it vitiates accepted research methods—something that we are currently grappling with in local knowledge and participatory research in development (Sillitoe, Dixon, and Barr 2005). The Wola are no more normatively programmed than any other persons and possibly considerably less so than some, with the high value they put on individual autonomy. While they ascribe to loosely held canons of proper ways to behave, considerable variation is possible and brings to mind Watson’s (1970) characterization of Tairora society as “organised flow.” For example, attempts to establish rules about marriageable categories of kin revealed a wide range of opinion as to the extent to which local sem groups are exogamous, even the extent of the incest taboo, itself varyingly interpreted; the position of many being that so long as you do not marry close kin, any partner is alright. In other words, individuals have a wide range of free choice. Furthermore, the importance put on personal sovereignty means that there is no authority to legislate on what is expected behavior or the proper choice in any context. The potential for choice and the scope for individual variation are wide, which makes prediction difficult, for example, regarding the economists’ assumption of maximization. At any juncture Kot’s choice may be quite different from Pes’s choice when they are presented with the same options, having different expectations, facing different demands, experiencing different problems, with different personal histories, and so on. An intriguing point regarding this challenge to the normative view of society is how far can variability go before we have collapse of mutual understanding and expectations, even of social order (that is, people effectively belonging to different cultures and speaking different languages)? This is a longstanding question; as Evens (1977, 593) observed some time ago in an essay on the individual and social interaction, we “can say next to nothing of general empirical significance about a question so intuitively obvious, say, as that of the connection between frequency of behavioral conformity and the persistence of values.” The extent of dissonance among the Wola and their capacity for undermining categorical boundaries—which I interpret as a facet of their stateless order where, by definition, as I point out, there is no authority to legislate convention (chapter 3)—has stimulated my interest in these questions. It relates to social process, which has come to prominence more recently, and the associated notion of the “agent,”

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which sociologists use to label persons whose behavior affects—indeed, continually constitutes—the social system (I prefer to talk of the individual as both more transparent and directly linked to economic thought). While we are born into a cultural heritage with a unique history (that is, we do not make up our own),48 which condition our values and understanding, these do not straitjacket us. We make our own interpretations and continually modify these in our behavior and confrontations with others over perceived shortcomings in the accepted way to do things. We see human creativity at work, to use the current sociological idiom, as individuals interpret and innovate on social life. A concern to plot the extent of possible variation within any social grouping is not just an academic exercise. It relates to the problems currently facing cosmopolitan society with palpable increase in tensions between communities—for instance, in Europe and North America, where those of Chinese extraction are perceived to be different from the English, from the Bengalis, from the Jamaicans, and so on. How much variation is socially viable? For example, in the United Kingdom we celebrate saris, mosques, and oriental cuisine, but we abhor family honor killings, arranged marriages, persecution of child witches, and so on. When do the tensions of differences become volatile? Individual variability in behavior and disagreements over it comprise the seeds of social change, differences between individuals over supposed normative values and so on generating change. The collective sociological focus, long criticized for its synchronic structural stance, has problems coping with social change. It is ironic that this focus sought to criticize nineteenth-century concerns with social evolution—particularly as these spotlighted the grand processes of change—for lack of evidence and resort to conjecture, with postmodernism currently undermining twentieth-century anthropology in turn for its dubious use of ahistorical ethnographic evidence to support its collective social “theories.” It is now widely granted that we never have any agreed and final social arrangements, they are always provisional and dynamic; we have ongoing process, the making of history. No humans appear entirely content with their social situation; they are constantly pressing to modify it, effecting what they perceive at any time as improvements. It seems a never-ending process because all social arrangements have shortcomings given the contradictions that unavoidably characterize them, regardless of the musings of some Utopian thinkers. The changes people effect in their society’s institutional arrangements and so on may be small in any generation, but looked at over several generations they may be cumulatively large. A focus on the individual offers an opportunity to engage with these processes. This is to go beyond ideas about social process constantly modifying social structure, such as the desperate-sounding “habitus” (Bourdieu 1977) and “structuration” (Giddens 1984), to address the ever-present tensions and conflicts in any social situation that are the drivers of change (Alexander 1988). The challenge will be to collect ethnographic data monitoring behavioral variation systematically over many decades in an attempt to understand such processes of change, to track how the content of behavior shifts over time and why. The incorporation of individual variation into the analysis of social behavior and

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knowledge, accommodating the individual agent into social process, presents some interesting methodological challenges. As Douglas (1978, 5) comments, “It follows that instead of a fixed institutional structure, it [sociology] would be faced with an infinite vista of social transformations. The theory would not be static, but perhaps too uncontrollably dynamic.”49 A possible way to approach such a body of variable data is to envisage individuals related initially within globally encapsulated networks and subsequently within multidimensional social universes, as I have tentatively sketched out (Sillitoe 2002b). Emerging computerized agent-based modeling of behavior promises ways to handle the large volumes of information. We can only deal with such variation, as noted, by collecting and recording large amounts of ethnographic data—it is ethnographicdeterminism with a vengeance—so that we can assess the extent of disparity and accommodate it. It is different from the generalizing approach of collective sociology, not presuming to reduce a community to normative persons (which, according to one apocryphal story, led a prominent anthropologist to spend a homeward-bound ship journey cutting all the ethnographic material from a manuscript that contradicted its descent structure). Instead it seeks to detail the behavior and ideas of many persons to capture something of the variety that comprises the community. It will demand close attention to evidence, not a few just-so-story case histories but statistically significant samples of data, which may prove testing for current anthropological field methods, particularly reflexive approaches that countenance subjective, sometimes travelogue-like, narratives. It also challenges the generalizing step, which somehow decides whose views are taken as society’s standard, which I have found so problematic among the Wola, who are reluctant to discuss such issues as rules of conduct. They more often than not respond, Obun konem (It’s up to him/her; literally, his or her wishes) to such queries, and are averse to talking about such matters in the abstract, asking who, where, and when to hypothetical questions about behavior. Nor do they make symbolic allusions (so far as I can tell) that might lend themselves to a search for meaning or interpretation that could indicate their normative view—in many cases I only have the results of actual behavior, and sometimes comments specifically on it. Until recently it was difficult to handle the necessarily large data sets (tables comparing a few factors being inadequate), but as computing power and accessibility increase, particularly with e-science advances, it becomes ever more feasible to do so. The ethnographic data reported here made me aware of the potential of this technology. When we conducted the demographic and garden surveys there were no database programs or Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to store and manipulate such numerical and spatial data. At one time, pre-GIS and spreadsheets, I wrestled with scissors and glue to place gardens on a topographical base map, but I had to give up. It seems with hindsight that I was unwittingly waiting for the technology to arrive. It allows the presentation of integrated electronic databases of cultivation and demography in the Was Valley that intimate what may become common practice as we engage with individual social variation (see the DVD included with this book). This technology, allowing us

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increasingly to tackle issues of cultural and social variation, offers a way to break out of the circular arguments that have centered on the society versus individual antinomy, which for three hundred years has dominated social philosophy and subsequently sociology (arguments that themselves circulate, reappearing in the disguise of new jargon— structural-functionalism, interactionism, structuration, habitus, and so on).

CHAPTER 3

Community and the Other-Interested Individual

I

t is increasingly evident that the collectivist sociological approach is inadequate to entirely understanding human sociality. It is not that it is wrong so much as partial. But the economists’ view that individual self-interest is the driving force behind behavior is equally partial. As some economists acknowledge, such as Sen (1990, 37), who comments that the “purely economic man is indeed close to being a social moron.”1 The idea that selfish material interests drive human behavior gained favor in Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. At this time, as Dumont (1977, 97) comments in his review of Adam Smith’s legacy, we see “the elevation of the individual subject, of man as ‘self-loving,’ labouring-and-exchanging, who through his toil, his interest, and his gain, works for the common good, for the wealth of nations.” There are parallels between the self-regulating market of teeming individuals and the self-equilibrating mechanical images of the universe advanced by natural scientists at the time (Uphoff 1996). Today we have complexity, indeterminate subatomic particles, and even chaos theory influencing some social thinkers, but economists stick with the maximizing individual. In some regards this is reasonable, as they have developed on that individual’s back a formidable conceptual scheme to account for human behavior. The premise that humans act as self-interested individuals, their choices motivated by materialistic goals, arguably offers one of the best ways to analyze and predict behavior. There is much evidence that it matches observed actions and is a significant and pervasive motivating force in human behavior, giving credibility to “rational actor” approaches. But what was introduced as a philosophical premise, that humans are individualistic and selfish, has become widespread dogma in our society. We assume that it equates with rational behavior, while anything else is irrational, or at least a hindrance; as Gudeman (1986, 129) puts it, “The economy is characterized by calculational action,

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while rule-governed activity—or human institutions and culture—is but an encrustation and constraint on this sphere,” which is a strange view of our collective side. The assumption that people act with personal advantage in view only, not caring about others’ well-being, is patently an error. We have confusion of a simplified—albeit elegant though value loaded—model of human motivation with reality, which is not to deny that it offers useful insights. I have deployed the model in part in my analysis of the Wola political economy (Sillitoe 1979b) and draw upon it again here. It has led some, as the previous chapter points out, to think I import an inappropriate individualistic view into Highland New Guinea culture; this chapter continues the case for otherwise, by further specifying the character of the Melanesian individual and significance for understanding the “economy.” Human beings are clearly both selfish and generous, as Kohn (1990, 35) catches in his observation, “Every day people near your home steal wallets, and every day other people go out of their way to return lost wallets to their owners.”2 Individuals may tend to be more one than the other, but all will display both selfishness and generosity during their interaction with others, depending on context. Many may behave like the mythical “economic man” much of the time, guided by self-serving intentions, but to assume in the name of analytical simplicity that all do so all of the time overlooks the importance attached to collective interests and altruistic urges. Even Adam Smith, credited with framing economics’ focus on self-interest, realized that there was another side to human behavior, for “how selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it” (cited in Kohn 1990, 44). A focus on the individual does not necessarily imply only the selfish individual. We have also the other-interested individual. Even the most narcissistic persons show generosity sometimes, while few are saintly enough to be without any selfish instincts. The economists’ assumption of self-interest is a onesided, distorted view of human behavior, which is more often a paradoxical amalgam of self- and other-interest, all humans having a capacity for both individualism and cooperation, which may explain in part the unwitting contradictions noted in some writing, such as Malinowski’s, remarked on in chapter 2. After a career wrestling with these issues, Gudeman (2001) remarks that it is necessary to bring together a combination of “community” and “market”—collective and individual—forces in any analysis, a view with which I concur.

The Selfish-Generous Individual Some writers, including economists, have questioned economics’ narrow focus on self-interested, materialistic behavior (Margolis 1984; Hirschman 1984; Mansbridge 1990; Sen 1990; Kohn 1990). According to Frank (1988, 256), “The self-interest model provides a woefully inadequate description of the way people actually behave,” and

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Orren (1988, 13) points out that “people do not act simply on the basis of their perceived self-interest, without regard to the aggregate consequences of their actions. They are also motivated by values, purposes, ideas, goals, and commitments that transcend self-interest.” These writers argue that economics needs also to consider behavior that esteems collective interests and mutual well-being.3 They draw on welfare economics, with its indifference curves and idea of Pareto-efficiency, which seeks to establish optimal positions where all involved make gains from market arrangements. We can envisage a stable arrangement where actors attach value to others’ benefit in addition to their own. Such economists do not seek to write the individual out, implying the unqualified surrender of individual interests to others’ welfare. Computer simulations of various strategies to maximize collective and individual gains show that opportunistic taking advantage of others is less profitable in the long term than cooperative-reciprocal interaction. Using game theory, Axelrod (1984, 20, 21) demonstrates how cooperation can “emerge in a world of egoists without central authority” and that “cooperation, once established on the basis of reciprocity, can protect itself from invasion by less cooperative strategies,” which captures the Wola situation well. Recent research confirms these findings and shows how variation in individual attitudes can influence the extent to which behavior approaches the standard economic view with self-interest the mainspring. Crudely, we can think of individuals as either self-regarding or other-regarding in their outlook (Camerer and Fehr 2006). Interaction between such personality types suggests how humans sustain sociable behavior that is in the interests of all parties. When strongly self-regarding individuals interact they discourage cooperative behavior, whereas other-regarding individuals promote it. It turns out in simulated situations that other-regarders, who value the outcomes of behavior for other parties, are inclined to reward partners for cooperative, reciprocating behavior and impose sanctions on self-regarding norm violators whose amoral outlook prompts them to have no interest in outcomes for others. In real life they lose out on the benefits of cooperation. Such reciprocal schemes do not exclude self-interest; they can appear and persist within a community of largely self-motivated individuals, for whom it is rational to think of others. As DiMaggio (1990, 117) comments, “Homo economicus, however socially vacuous, is a useful idiot for many kinds of economic models . . . role expectations may be built in . . . [such] as utilities attached to the welfare of role-partners or disutilities associated with the violation of moral injunctions.”4 We may think of such arrangements as the product of enlightened self-interest, which I have drawn on in my interpretation of the Wola social order (see below). We can imagine human behavior as extending from the outright selfish to the wholly selfless, and often featuring a baffling combination of both, which Uphoff (1996, 341) depicts in a useful diagram of behavioral options that mirrors in an intriguing way one that I devised to depict the centrality of exchange to the Wola social order (Sillitoe 1979b, 290). The horizontal continuum covers behavioral aims or “outcomes” (to bene-

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To view this image, please refer to the print version of this book.

Figure 3.1. Individual and cooperative behavior grid

fit oneself or others) and the vertical one the action taken with respect to them (see also Douglas’s grid-group diagram [1978, 7]). When individuals behave selfishly (quadrant I), they may treat others largely as strangers. This characterizes many relationships of the marketplace, as described, where persons think only to benefit themselves and not other parties. In the extreme, we have aggressive behavior, which is other-destructive, where adversaries seek to benefit at one another’s expense. Something that marks off Wola self-interested behavior as of a somewhat different order is that, even as enemies in times of hostilities, persons who interact with one another are infrequently strangers—indeed, they are often related. This signals a notable difference between Melanesian and capitalist individualism. When individuals behave generously, they may treat others largely as friends or relatives (quadrant II). They may not necessarily be indifferent to their own interests in thinking to benefit others in some measure, for example, they may see mutual interests in cooperation (quadrant III). Alternatively, they may behave altruistically and value others’ welfare above their own, their behavior influenced not only by their personal gains but also by the effect their choices have on others or their community (quadrant IV). They may have done better as individuals if they had ignored the effect of their choice on others but judge themselves better off if their behavior enhances others’ wellbeing, considering the increased benefit enjoyed by those whose welfare they value to be worth the loss. There is, in economic-speak, a net benefit to total welfare, or behavior that considers “one person’s utility being positively affected by another person’s welfare” (Axelrod 1984, 135). In the extreme, we have self-sacrifice, which may be self-destructive, where the interests of others or the group are put above one’s own.5 Such extreme altruistic acts often appear to have their origins in nature and not culture (where economic behavior occurs); for example, it is rare for someone to put himself in life-threatening danger or pain, or to incur large material loss to help someone else, and the instances that occur, such as sacrifices made by parents for their children, are

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less sociological than biological in motivation, relating to the continuance of the species and so on (Fehr and Fischbacher 2003). These four aspects to behavior relate to the complex of qualities that comprise the human individual. There is the individual agent, who represents the calculating individual out to maneuver any interactional sequence to his or her advantage and whose acts may lead to changes in accepted social arrangements—that is, drive social process. There is the person, who has a sense of corporate morality and observes social norms and expectations, socialized and influenced through life experiences into “personhood”— that is, signifies social structure. There is the self, who is the reflective individual who rationally, with the guidance of his or her cultural heritage, ponders his or her place in the world and options in it—that is, consciously exercises reason. And there is the emotional being, who responds to feelings such as joy and fear, which may have a primeval aspect (for example, Rousseau maintains that our sense of sympathy for those in pain and distress is something that we share with other animals)—that is, reacts largely unconsciously. The individual is clearly a considerably more complicated entity than economic assumptions allow. The Wola, like all human beings, can manifest aspects of all four behavior exemplars, but I think that their culture strongly features quadrant III, “Self-Regarding Cooperation,” where we have self-interested collective action. This corresponds to Olson’s (1965) participation in cooperative action with a view to one’s own interests, without particular thought for the benefits that may accrue to others. The reason, I argue, is that the stateless-order-inured value they attach to individual freedom of action makes them reluctant to give up much of their autonomy to the collective, whence, as pointed out in the previous chapter, some interest group or individual might highjack it and exert power over them. It inhibits large-scale long-term cooperation beyond a small kin circle. This flies in the face of the sociological characterization of tribal people that has dominated twentieth-century anthropology, as mentioned in the previous chapter, which accords priority to collective morality and normative solidarity, putting us in quadrant IV, “Other-Regarding Cooperation.” Arguing that individual self-interest features prominently in Wola social life is not to suggest that they subscribe to no shared values and responsibilities, for there is an element, albeit somewhat variable and fluid, of normative “other-regarding” structure to interaction. Status concerns are significant. Persons who promote collective interaction and cooperation in culturally sanctioned ways are likely to enhance their social standing and win respect. Those who do not are likely to incur the opprobrium of others. Here there may be moral and material incentives to behave appropriately, again possibly appealing to self-interest. It is judicious to harness the drive of individuals for security, recognition, status, and such to socially advantageous ends. This view informs my interpretation of the Wola social order, where ambitious persons’ aspirations to achieve social renown prompt them to act energetically in transactional contexts pivotal to the social order. Individualistic aims can consequently characterize “other-regarding” actions,

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as in quadrant II, “Individual Generosity.” Indeed, according to Sen (1990, 29), in his critique of economists’ behavioral assumptions, “It is possible to define a person’s interests in such a way that no matter what he does he can be seen to be furthering his own interests in every isolated act of choice.”6 It is intriguing to note in assessing economics’ focus on individual self-interest that even altruistic behavior can sometimes be interpreted as the polar opposite, for not only those receiving self-interested charity but also those giving it may derive benefit—in reputation, for instance, and self-regard. The doggerel-writing pamphleteer Mandeville, whose focus on human greed is cited as a precursor to Smith’s work, made the point long ago in his Fable of the Bees; or, Private Vices, Publick Benefits, in his pointed criticism of charity school patronage.7 A missionary, for example, who devotes her life to helping the poor, may find intense satisfaction in so doing, and is therefore, in no small measure, acting out of self-interest; furthermore, she may wish to earn a reputation and renown as a kind, generous, and noble-spirited person, in which event her behavior features an even greater element of self-interest. It illustrates the tangled skein of motivations that informs human behavior, which encompass the entire spectrum of the above schema. This reasoning informed the idea that individual acts motivated by self-interest may have “publick benefits” or collective consequences, from which derives the idea of the “hidden hand of the market” that I modify in the Wola context to the “hidden hand of exchange.” While there are grounds for questioning the distorting social effects of the philosophical assumptions of current economic theory, these do not detract from the fact that self-interest features significantly in human behavior. And importantly, modifying the definition of economy given in chapter 1, self-interest does not have to relate simply to primary material needs (such as that for food and shelter) but can relate to secondary social goals (such as the achievement of prestige and renown).

The Individual in Society It is clearly distorting to focus exclusively on either individuality or collectivity or, as Granovetter (1985) puts it in an influential paper, the “under-socialized” and “over-socialized” human being.8 Either extreme is erroneous. The wish to defend individualistic economic theory or collectivist sociology is understandable when their comprehension demands years of engagement with often obscure, jargon-laden arguments that rival getting on top of Schrödinger’s second-order partial differential wave equation in quantum mechanics, but there is increasingly a consensus that we need to review and integrate both perspectives to advance a rounded understanding of human behavior. Here I agree entirely with A. J. Strathern and Stewart (2000, 12), who in reviewing this issue point out that as with “many debates in the social sciences, truth lies in the middle pathway incorporating elements of two extremes.” Self-interest exerts a powerful influence on behavior and, whether enlightened or not, can have wider beneficial outcomes—Adam Smith’s hidden hand—but taken to extremes it undermines

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social interaction, destroying trust and responsibility. Unfettered individualism—pure quadrant I, “Selfish Individualism”—is socially unimaginable, for any human behavior is inevitably socially conditioned; we are all inculcated into social ways from birth, as mentioned previously. After all, human evolutionary success is arguably due in part to the human species’ capacity for culturally informed cooperation. While collective concerns exert a significant influence on behavior, taken too far they can have negative consequences, leading to mob behavior, identity loss and group manipulation, even support for totalitarian regimes (Koestler 1967). Blind cooperation is likewise difficult to imagine, unless coerced, for we cannot eradicate individual calculation. But economics’ emphasis on self-interested calculation, currently a point of faith in capitalist society, also invites misinterpretation of human behavior. Humans are both selfish and generous, as pointed out. While analytically we may oppose self-interest to cooperation, the individual to the group, in reality they are linked in complex ways, at one point opposed and at another complementing one another.9 This view expands our analytical space, and is how I have attempted to understand the Wola social order. The individual versus society dichotomy is a heuristic device or intellectual fiction with a long philosophical history.10 The distinction between persons and individuals is an artifact of this intellectual device, which does not represent social reality, for we are all both persons and individuals simultaneously. It is sound advice that “we must stop thinking that at the heart of Melanesian culture is a hierarchical relation between society and the individual” (A. M. Strathern 1988, 15), which some seem to think I promote. All cultures are a paradoxical combination of both, as I pointed out some time ago when I first broached these issues in the context of Wola sociality (1979b, 8–11). Or as Evens (1977, 580) puts it, “Preferences and values, and the individual and society, are related to each other not only by difference but also by a kind of identity or coessentiality, or, to be cant, by basic feedback.” Persons act with others in mind. They do not behave only according to their individual expectations, needs, and wishes but also take those of others into consideration, to whom they acknowledge responsibilities that are informed and influenced by inherited values.11 Since others’ views, not just their own, influence what persons do, they behave within a complex network of assumptions, inclinations, and goals. Their behavior is never entirely theirs because the expectations and acts of those they associate with influence it. In the New Guinea Highlands context, A. J. Strathern and Stewart (2000, 6) have recently proposed the term “relationalindividual” to cover this “state of being that cannot be described simply as ‘relational’ or as ‘individual’ but is the product of ceaseless dialectic or interplay between relationality and individuality, neither being prior to nor ascendant over the other.” This formulation strives to establish a balance between the individual and the collective by combining recognition of individuality with that of the moral person, combating the analytical obliteration of the individual while simultaneously drawing attention to relatedness. Relations imply cooperation, which is in the interests of all. Primeval in origin, and subsequently culturally encoded, these feature in all human social behavior. They

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underpin our remarkable capacity for collaboration. This in turn demands certain conditions, notably an aptitude for requited interaction. While reciprocal altruism or prosocial behavior may offer benefits to all, their realization depends on everyone “giving and taking” properly. In stateless contexts altruism equates with Margolis’s (1984, 21– 25) “goods altruism,” where individuals act generously to benefit others because they derive satisfaction from improvements in both others’ and their well-being.12 His “participation altruism,” where people act out of patriotism or civic duty, does not feature in my understanding of Wola behavior.13 Cooperation is only feasible to the extent that others esteem and agree to collective action, that there is a consensus. Generosity will not continue if it fails to elicit a positive reciprocal response or upholds what A. J. Strathern and Stewart (2000, 15) refer to as “investor trust” in the Highlands transactional context. If others are largely selfish, this is likely to curb generous behavior and social arrangements will falter. Communities socialize their members to discourage such outright selfish behavior and employ sanctions to punish those who fail to observe collaborative conventions. The manner in which different people relate the individual and cooperative sides of behavior together varies widely, according to both shared culturally inculcated values and personal experiences and inclinations, such that they may give different apparent emphasis to one or the other. The values the Wola hold, notably with respect to individual sovereignty and equality, inhibit collective action beyond a certain point, promoting self-interested calculations above other-interested ones. They incline, I think, in their words and actions, toward the individual, seeking to extend personal autonomy to all, to a degree compliant with the continuance of social order. The implication is not that they act as totally free individuals who can do anything they like, whatever the whim of the moment dictates. They are not islands, as Donne put it. Nor do they make up social conventions as they go through life (contra Lederman 1986b, 64). They share many assumptions and expectations in common, generally speaking, which inform their behavior, albeit subject to variation and negotiation by individuals. They find themselves embedded in ramifying kin networks and recognize obligations and responsibilities to one another, as evident in their complex sociopolitical exchange system (how anyone could think a book focusing on it [Sillitoe 1979b] hangs on a Western notion of individualism as something prior to society is beyond my understanding). In short, they are born into established social arrangements, inherited from the past and handed on to future generations; as Kohn (1990, 254) comments, “Every person is nested in social relationships” such that the “notion of personhood is dependent on those relationships. We are social beings; each of us is already in a world, willy-nilly. One might even say that the idea of an individual self is abstracted from the given reality of interconnection—as opposed to the view that it is society that is a reification and only separate selves are real.”14 While it is unlikely that any two persons will agree on every point, there will be a significant degree of overlap between those who share the same language and culture,

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though not exactly the same overlap as they may have with others. Any community inculcates certain values that guide individual behavior: one of these for the Wola is equality, another the importance of reciprocity in social relations. The assumptions of collectivist sociology about the extent to which these dictate behavior in small-scale societies are questioned increasingly. People are not “well-trained sheep-dogs picking their way through institutional mazes” (Douglas 1978, 5), or, as I have expressed it previously, normatively conditioned social robots in whose every act we can read some collective meaning, often unconscious (1979b, 8). The values they inherit situate behavior and inform the expected outcomes of interactional sequences. They may specify what makes a successful person and the respectable way to conduct oneself, which among the Wola includes excelling in exchange transactions, defending individual and family rights, and providing for self and kin. But they leave room for individual calculation, game playing, and maneuver, extending to persons political-economic freedom unheard of in a state. The title of my first book, Give and Take, relates to the compromise between individual autonomy and community interests, in addition to alluding to the centrality of exchange in Wola political life. Their self-focused acts comply with an enduring sociopolitical system that safeguards the autonomy of all. But they can be generous too, so far as their culture’s parameters reasonably permit; indeed, they are urged to be openhanded, such behavior earning social respect—as noted in the previous chapter, they are enjoined to give wealth away and not hoard it, contra capitalist logic. The individual and society antinomy seems an irresolvable philosophical chestnut, which is probably in humanity’s best interests, even if an irritation to some tidy-minded sociologists. The furor in the Muslim community over a Danish newspaper’s publication of cartoons depicting Mohammed catches the tension, demonstrating the need to balance the right of individuals to free speech with responsibility to other persons in the community. The Melanesian individual and cultural context throw an interesting and novel light, from a European perspective, on the paradox of society’s simultaneously self-interested individual yet cooperative person. This selfish-generous character occurs early in the region’s literature. When Malinowski (1922), for example, proposes that the motives for the kula are simultaneously both psychological and social, he raises the nature of the relationship between the individual and society. It is, as he was aware, an academic distinction—empirically, as pointed out, the separation of individual wants from society’s expectations not being possible—and he sought to balance intellectually between an unsocialized independent individual who does as she or he pleases and instinct urges and a moral person guided by some imaginary omnipotent “collective conscience” that directs all behavior to cooperative ends.15 He implicitly interpreted the kula simultaneously as an institution that both accommodates individual drives and promotes an orderly and ongoing society. In considering these issues he raises again the issue of self-interest, which runs strongly through his kula account, though he makes nothing of it; as Uberoi (1962, 160) senses: “The key to the ultimate social importance

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of kula valuables [is] that they represent to the normally kin-bound individuals of these small stateless societies the highest point of their legitimate individual self-interest, and also the interest of the widest political association of which they all partake.” While the distinction between individual and collective interests is a fiction regarding actual social behavior, which is an undisentanglable relational blend of both, people widely recognize a difference between individual and group endeavors. The Wola can distinguish verbally between individual action and collective action. They use words such as niy (I), mbib (self ), aengora/ora (only), bombort/mond (one), and hunguwm (alone) for an individual doing something on her or his own. And they employ antonyms such as na (we), hombuwn (all), haeruw (together), onduwup (many), and sem (family) for people acting collectively.16 No one has ever mentioned, let alone discussed, social action as an isomorphic combination of both individual and collective dimensions, although, like humans the world over, they live it, if they do not talk about it. It is again tacit and we can only access such understanding through extensive ethnographic observation and documentation in the determinist way, as social actors manifest it in behavior. The Wola have no words, so far as I am aware, for this combination, as we have none in English either to impose on them, and I think that it is problematic to borrow a neologism to sit between both, such as “dividual” or, more appropriately perhaps from the perspective of this book, an invention such as “commuvidual.” While such a heuristic device may be legitimate to further intellectual discussion, its use demands care, as it is not a reflection of actors’ spoken thoughts but attributes some unconscious awareness to actors.

The “Society” It is not only Melanesian ideas of the individual that differ from those of capitalism but also experience of society. The assumption that the notion of society has universal relevance poses similar problems to the applicability of the concept of economy. All communities evidence orderly social arrangements most of the time; anarchy is a short-lived breakdown and is mercifully rare, although even then some factions maintain order within themselves (that is, not everyone turns on everyone else). The idea of society is a difficult one to apply to the Wola, who have no word so far as I know that suggests the concept, nor do they discuss social issues in a manner that intimates its covert existence—as I have discussed previously (Sillitoe 1979b, 24–28) and others have too elsewhere in New Guinea (Wagner 1974; Biersack 1995; Hays 1993; A. M. Strathern 1988). It reflects a wider trend recently in the social sciences to query the abstraction society and talk instead of sociality or, in New Guinea contexts, “relationality.” When I questioned the appropriateness of talking about Wola society, this unfortunately coincided with right-wing assertions in the 1980s that there is “no such thing as society”—twaddle that perversely (given its adherence to the crude, selfish market conventions mentioned in the previous chapter) set back arguments for more thoroughgoing consideration of the individual in social context. It is not my intention

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to suggest that the idea of society has no use as an abstraction but rather to qualify its relevance to the Was Valley. After all, I continue to use the word society, rather as “substantivists” and some Marxists who declare that economics has no relevance to noncapitalist orders continue to talk about the economy. There is no local conception of Wola society in the sense of a defined entity that includes all those who speak the same language, or mutually intelligible dialects, and subscribe to a similar set of culturally defined mores—as we refer to English society and understand this to encompass those who live in England, speak English, identify with its culture, and so on. And there is no idea of society in the sociological sense of a superordinate category that informs individual behavior (A. M. Strathern 1988, 102). But there is society in a smaller and less defined sense, as something that a collection of people associated together experience, who are sociable—such as when we talk about the society enjoyed by members of a club or those who work together. It is in this second sense that I often talk of Wola society. Those who live in the same geographical region and interact with one another enjoy such a sense of society. Whatever local perceptions, we can identify regions of the New Guinea Highlands where people speak mutually intelligible languages and share many of the same cultural practices. It is sometimes useful to refer collectively to such groups in our academic deliberations. Some question this, arguing that it is dishonest to extend the findings of research conducted in only a small part of any region in this way, such as R. M. Smith (1980, 85–86), who thinks that by “consistently generalizing on the basis of a knowledge of only a tiny fraction of it [the population], Sillitoe is either deceiving his reader or just being sloppy.”17 But this has long been accepted anthropological practice. It is widely understood that when we talk about Trobriand or Kapauku society—or English society, come to that—we refer to an abstraction founded on knowledge of only a few communities that comprise the society.18 It is following in this tradition that I continue sometimes to write about the Wola. Readers who cannot stomach this should mentally substitute “Those living in a small region of the Was Valley” every time they read “Wola.”19 The issue of distinguishing linguistic-cum-cultural entities as societies or whatever is not trivial, as such categories certainly distort the indigenous view, which we seek to catch in some manner. People often make no attempt to distinguish themselves in this way, frequently having no names for what we perceive of as “cultures.” The names given to these, and now prominent in the anthropological literature, are often contrived and sometimes comical in their derivation (which may serve as a salutary warning). Those who christened them often latched on to some repeatedly heard but unintelligible word and used it as a label. The patrol that first entered the Was Valley called those living there the Wen people, after hearing them say wen, wen which means “soon, soon,” as they tried to tell the apparently lost strangers that they would soon reach the next place on the path (Sillitoe 1979b, 16). The Fasu of the nearby Kutubu region are named after their word fasu, for “nothing” (E. Gilberthorpe, pers. comm.), and the Gnau people of the Torricelli mountains after their word gnau, for “no” (Lewis 1975)—both were

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presumably expressing negative feelings about the newcomers. The Arapesh were more welcoming, perhaps, their word arapesh meaning “friends” (Mead 1938). So, too, were the Siane of the Eastern Highlands, their word siane being a greeting, although it also means “There are buttocks,” suggesting a possible insult to the outsiders (Salisbury 1962). And among the Orokaiva the word orokaiva means “peace,” suggesting that they feared attack by the outsiders (Williams 1930). The delineation of these ill-defined linguistic-cultural groups can be problematic and further illustrates their indistinct quality. Specifying the boundaries between them can be difficult as they often blend one into another rather than feature abrupt breaks (the obscure boundary issue has significant political implications for stateless orders— see chapter 4). The boundary-drawing conundrum occurs at all levels in Melanesia, from macro to micro categories, from the definition of so-called societies to kin groups. At the macro level it even relates to the specification of Melanesia’s place on the globe ( Johnston and Valencia 1991), different writers putting the region’s boundary in different places, for it is not easy to define precisely, on geographical, cultural, biological, historical, or other grounds, where Melanesia ends and the neighboring regions (of Indonesia, Micronesia, Polynesia, and Australia) begin.20 Are Salawati island off the Vogelkop in the west and Fiji in the east in or out, and why these islands and not others (Ploeg 1996)? At the midlevel between the greater category of Melanesia and the lesser one of the language/cultural group, we have similar problems with the inconsistent use of labels such as the Highlands of New Guinea versus the Highlands Fringe (A. J. Strathern 1990; Hays 1993). Wherever we draw a geographical boundary demands arbitrary decisions because any one part of the region fades into another without any abrupt linguistic, cultural, or other changes.21 The limited applicability of the abstraction we call society to Wola speakers and the apparent absence of an analogous concept in their language poses problems. These Highlanders talk of widely acknowledged obligations constraining their behavior, such as their responsibility to participate in transactions on certain social occasions, to seek revenge for injured or slain kin, and so on. It is as if they perceive of these as imposed on them collectively—for example, when I have regretted persons’ violent responses to infringements of their rights, they have retorted that it is obligatory to seek revenge. There is perhaps a certain irony in the inevitability of people who put such value on personal political autonomy subscribing to collectively evolved and established constraints on their behavior. It is a paradox reflected in the twin facets of exchange: sociability and competition. The apparent outcome, as Campbell (1981, 298) acerbically puts it, is a “crude notion of society as the externalized super ego [that] keeps the ‘free individual’ in his place,” further underscoring the questionability of our idea of society to understanding the Wola order. Or as A. M. Strathern (1988, 12) more diplomatically puts it, it is necessary to “stop thinking that at the heart of these cultures is an antinomy between ‘society’ and ‘the individual.’ . . . . The history of anthropology is littered with cautions to the effect that we should not reify the concept of society.” The Wola do not.

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It is problematic to suggest that an abstract idea, namely, society, can inform social behavior when actors are apparently unaware of it. A concern not to make it appear concrete prompts many social scientists to avoid any direct reference, although strangely enough it is permissible to attribute a direct influence to other collectivities and talk of the social system or process ordering people’s behavior, or the collective conscience or unconscious impacting on their conduct, and we regularly talk in the active voice of governments legislating, businesses restructuring, or congregations reforming, all of which are intangible social phenomena (made to appear real by written records). One consequence is an oblique style of writing featuring unwieldy jargon to obscure any suggestion of attributing effects to an imagined concept. Another consequence, I think, is the rapid turnover of terms in sociology as writers try to avoid any such awkward associations (such that today, for example, it is acceptable to refer to social issues that appear to remain static between generations as involving “social reproduction” and to avoid attributing them to a timeless “social structure” that is actually subject to change with “social process”). The result is convoluted passive expression, sniped at in the previous chapter, which, when translated into everyday English, turns out to be no less banal than the writing of those who seek to make their assumptions transparent, bringing to mind Feynman’s (1985, 278) cuttingly clownish comments about “a sociologist who had written a paper.” When he “started to read the damn thing, . . . my eyes were coming out: I couldn’t make head or tail of it!” and consequently “I had this uneasy feeling of ‘I’m not adequate,’ [some admission for a Nobel-winning quantum physicist] until finally I said to myself, ‘I’m gonna stop, and read one sentence slowly, so I can figure out what the hell it means.’” When he did this “it became a kind of empty business” because while the paper was “written in such a fancy way that I couldn’t understand it at first, . . . when finally I deciphered it, there was nothing to it.” It is vexing that when we try to avoid such expression and criticism for empty argument or writing “nothing,” we may sometimes inadvertently give the impression consequently of reifying that abstraction society. Perhaps this is a further reason for questioning the use of the concept, if attempts to express its import unambiguously in the active voice appear to make a wraith the subject of a sentence or an effective agent. The Wola may be nearer to social reality without it, while acknowledging that social conventions and kin obligations inform behavior. The emerging consensus to describe New Guinea social life as “relational” is in part a response to the problems that attend the absence of any idea equivalent to society (A. J. Strathern and Stewart 2000; J. Robbins 2004, 290–94). While it squares with the focus on relationships in exchange, it does not dispense with the individual and collective distinction but rather unites these two poles, with persons (individuals) relating to one another through network (collective) interactions. The absence of any notion of a category equivalent to society brings to mind the celebrated antinomy of “the set of all sets that are not members of themselves” (Russell 1908),22 which is a version of the ancient Greek paradox attributed to Epimenides of

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Crete and his deliberately puzzling assertion, “All Cretans are liars.”23 A set is a defined collection of things; so a sem is a set comprising a group of related individuals who acknowledge that they share rights to a certain territory. The group is not a member of this set itself as it is not an individual. If we then think of taking all these sem sets that are not members of themselves to comprise a set, such as a higher-level abstract category equivalent to Wola society, we have a paradox in that such a set can only by definition be a member of itself if it is not a member of itself. The pragmatic residents of the Was Valley avoid the resulting contradictions in that they entertain no such abstract concept, unlike social philosophers, who are consequently mired in all manner of irresolvable arguments.24 To imagine what the meta-set of society might be for the Wola is perhaps to do them an intellectual disservice, as evident in the convoluted arguments of the social sciences that cannot escape certain inconsistencies and circularity of reasoning with a paradox at their heart. One consequence, as noted, is inconsistent statements about the imagined set called society, frequently in prolix prose that seeks to avoid attributing agency to this abstraction that in categorical thought should not exist anyway. Another consequence of shying away from the idea of society is an increasing reluctance to ask why people behave in the way they do, and focus instead on how they interact socially (and how the observer’s viewpoint influences such interpretation). Current interest in history, an understandable reaction to previous static perspectives, further encourages this “how” focus (chapter 9). While it aims to introduce a necessary diachronic perspective into social debates, it fosters a focus on historical events, not a search for principles behind social change, which puts the problematic concept of society back on the agenda. The search for such principles informing social transformation has proved difficult, as evidenced by the problems that plague attempts to manage economic development (chapter 13), which prompts some to declare that it is futile, that each historical circumstance is unique beyond “why” explanation and amenable only to “how” interpretation. The paradox is that evading the society challenge threatens to put sociology, and its close cousin social anthropology, out of business as the “the science of society” (OED), and supplant it with history, as some argue. I disagree: I think we should continue to ask “why” questions (which is not to decry the value of “how” accounts). All is not lost for sociology and social anthropology with their “science of humankind” aspirations. We continue to talk openly about society comprising the values and norms that people specify inform their behavior (for example, the importance of reciprocity in social relations, the right of persons to determine their own actions, the need for balance in relationships, the value put on political equality, and so on). We use the word society as shorthand for a collectivity of persons who are socialized to subscribe to the same value code, recognize agreed ways to behave toward one another, and acknowledge certain common responsibilities (invariably framed according to kin categories in small-scale communities such as occur in the New Guinea Highlands). While actors may vary in their interpretation of these and they are subject to manipulation

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by them and change over time, they show a certain consistency at any instance. When we talk about such a collectivity, we customarily refer to “society” rather than give this cumbersome specification. The assumption is that this abstraction—in the sense that we cannot take hold of society and put it on a table—informs and influences persons’ social behavior. It is in this shorthand sense that I also sometimes refer to society, as a collection of values that inform people’s actions, aware that it has no parallel to my knowledge in the Wola language. The inapplicability of the idea of a Wola society encompassing all those who speak their language relates to the problem of what to call these people collectively as, in keeping with their disinterest in such a category, they have no name for themselves.25 After giving the problem some considerable thought, I decided to christen them Wola, a name that some of these people or neighbors use as a cultural and geographical label (Sillitoe 1979b, 24–25).26 It has historical precedent too. Some of the prewar patrol officers picked up on the term, and F. E. Williams (1940), although he labeled them “Grasslanders,” also used it, spelled Wela, as does the linguist Rule (1965).27 It is wry for a discipline that is supposedly sensitive to colonial impositions that writers insist on referring to the Wola as Mendi, using the geographical name of a place in the easternmost valley occupied by some speakers of the language—where the Australians established the first airstrip—for those living in four adjacent valleys. A typical reference is Hays (1992, 17), who writes, in reference to Williams’s trip, of a visit to “Mendi speakers of the Augu, Wage, and Nembi valleys.”28 If the Australian authorities had established the first administrative post in the Nembi Valley region, presumably we should call these people the Nipa instead of the Mendi, after the patrol post there called Nipa, which is the name of one of the sem on whose territory the authorities cleared an airstrip. Before this, the local people did not use the name for any group larger than Nipa sem, although today those in the region sometimes call themselves Nipa in distinction to Huli or Enga or Hageners, after colonial practice. While I have never heard anyone talk in terms that have suggested the abstract idea of society, people regularly speak in ways that show that they are aware of community and how it enters into and informs their lives. The most frequently heard word in this respect is sem (family), which, depending on context, may refer to a nuclear or extended family, or larger groups of kin (such as frequently glossed elsewhere “clan” and “lineage,” using descent terminology).29 The latter may include two hundred or more persons, and when referring to them speakers often add the suffix g enk (small) or onda (large) to sem. These groups also have their own proper names, such as Aenda and Ebay, the two semonda where I work in the Was Valley. Land is a significant feature in the constitution of these groups (chapter 4). While persons are potentially affiliated to several such groups, it is through residence on particular territories that they primarily actuate their association. This determines the group of relatives they regularly interact with and with whom others identify them. Your kin, particularly those you interact with regularly, influence your konay (mind), as mentioned previously. You share a cultural code and language that you jointly inter-

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pret and negotiate in the course of daily life. The classificatory kin terminology of the Wola, which allows individuals to relate themselves to the majority of persons they meet locally during their everyday lives, demonstrates how relatedness informs behavior. In this context people can voice principles of expected and proper behavior, which they may talk of as naun maen (our lore). They collectively subscribe to these values, such as marriage involves an exchange of bridewealth, or the produce of gardens belongs to those who cultivate them, or one looks out for kin and supports relatives who are in trouble, and so on. Another phrase with a similar meaning is shumbaen bismiy uwp (like [our] ancestors did [things]). This refers to precedents that have a collectively acknowledged moral force. Following on from this people have a clear idea of correct and incorrect behavior, talking of acts as oberaeb (right) or korob (wrong). Individuals do not invent these moral judgments for themselves but inherit them from their society, albeit they may seek to manipulate them to their advantage in the game of life. We have to think of Wola society, as experienced by people locally, as encompassing a limited region, what I have called a social universe, the focus of which shifts as we move from one location to another. Every Wola neighborhood has such a social universe centering on it, which consists of all those places locally where those living there have social relations.30 This is not an organized social group; it is simply a geographical area focused upon a neighborhood that marks spatially the extent of the regular social interaction of its residents. (Previously this marked the limits of people’s social interaction, whereas today several have connections beyond it to other distant regions.) Each neighborhood has a slightly different social universe, and these interlock with one another to cover large regions, giving a “multiverse” patchwork. The neighborhoods themselves constitute loosely knit communities of three hundred or so adults. They focus on sem groups that are named, stay in existence for generations, and comprise several interrelated families, the blood ties between which render them ideally exogamous. It is their occupation of geographical territories that gives these groups permanence: the rules that control their membership are those that govern land tenure (chapter 4).31 These have a wide bilateral scope, allowing considerable choice (although in actuality this appears restricted, men commonly claiming land on the territory where their fathers lived and they grew up, as mentioned previously, for they “belong” here more than anywhere else). All individuals are embedded in social networks, largely comprising kinship connections, which encompass and spread out from the neighborhood(s) where they reside. These inform their behavior, albeit the effects are uneven, subject to the ups and downs of life. The “network” image differs significantly from that of “structure” in that nothing is jurally determined or firmly laid down; nodes and links are continually negotiated, accommodating to ongoing social process. Rarely are two individual networks identical—brothers, for example, may start life sharing the same network but they develop their own connections through life (when they marry they create different affinal links and so on). Network members interact socially and continually influence one another. They are “partible persons” in the sense that interaction inevitably leaves

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some imprint on both parties, although no one has ever spoken to me in these terms, nor intimated in the sense of Mauss (1970) that they leave some ineffable part of themselves with the other person, nor that person with them—a view that has profoundly influenced interpretation of Melanesian society.32 If this is their philosophy, it is well hidden and has proved beyond my reach. It is this network interaction that serves to socialize individuals; as argued above, it is the way in which their society prepares them as they grow up and continues to influence them through the expectations and interests of those they interact with as adults. Persons consequently engage in socially conditioned, individualistically calculated acts. But different life experiences, kin connections, personal temperaments, and so on lead to different inculcations and calculations, which I seek to convey in the “variable individual” aspect of identity.

The Wola Social Order It is necessary to pursue these social arrangements somewhat further, notably locating individual and collective perspectives in the acephalous political arena, to draw out their implications and set the coming discussion of economic issues in context. The priority that stateless orders give individual political autonomy poses challenges for social order because by definition there are no authoritative offices to adjudicate or force decisions on persons. Again, it is fairly easy to conceive how small forager-hunter acephalous communities contrive to ensure social order among a few close kin living together. They comprise some of the most peaceful populations on record, in contrast to larger sedentary stateless ones such as the Wola, which are among some of the most bellicose. A significant feature promoting social order within a neighborhood is that all those living there are related to one another—ineluctably, given the kinship basis of the rules governing land tenure. Relatives are less likely than strangers to fall out violently, obviating, as in forager-hunter communities, the need for overt authoritative checks on behavior. They conduct themselves according to shared conventions, which depend at root on an unspoken acknowledgement that it is in the interests of all, living in close proximity to one another, to regulate their behavior and so facilitate the sociality and cooperation that benefits everyone. But even kin, particularly those more distantly related, inevitably come into dispute sometimes and sanctions exist to discourage blatantly selfish actions that spark disputes and undermine this apparently casual order. One sanction is for relatives to withdraw their support from wrongdoers, curtailing relations such that their blatantly self-interested behavior does them more harm than good, in that they forfeit the benefits of sociability and collaboration that come from the orderly social life that their behavior challenges. Although Axelrod and others (1984, 1997) had yet to publish their work when I initially formulated these ideas, their agentbased simulations, which focus on the “Prisoner’s Dilemma” and treat humans as adaptive rather than rational beings,33 confirm my suggestion that cooperation founded on reciprocity can emerge and continue even among egoists so long as there is the expec-

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To view this image, please refer to the print version of this book.

Figure 3.2. A man argues his point during a dispute

tation of ongoing interaction. “What the ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’ captures so well is the tension between the advantages of selfishness in the short term versus the need to elicit cooperation . . . to be successful in the longer run” (Axelrod 1997, 6). The “tit-for-tat” strategy ensures that norms emerge featuring an element of punishment for those who fail to cooperate as necessary. Individuals avoid openly flouting the conventions of self-regulation when interacting with kin they meet regularly, maybe daily, because this creates personal difficulties by putting relations in jeopardy and also because it threatens their reputations, which suffer if they behave unsociably. The assumption that individuals struggle in any social situation not only for selfish gains but also to win respect through generosity and living up to socially inculcated values is, as mentioned previously, a significant premise bridging the polar opposite human impulses to be both self-interested and sociable. The selfinterested striving of individuals for status and respect, guided by shared cultural values according to which others judge it, feeds back in an oblique way in disputes to reaffirm the social order without openly detracting from actors’ socially circumscribed personal autonomy, obviating the need for authoritative officeholders to effect settlement. A dispute is a matter between the two parties directly involved, usually a pair of individuals. It is not the business of others, initially, anyway, and as long as there is no violence. This attitude to wrongdoings and their settlement further indicates the absence of any idea of society as we conceive it, for there is no suggestion that a wrong is a crime against society, punished because it threatens the social order. Rather it is an offence against an individual and possibly his or her kin (particularly if violence ensues). During a dispute, however, others present may act as a jury of opinion, making comments and expressing their thoughts; again similar to forager-hunter communities. While unanimity is unlikely, the consequent actions of the parties to the dispute with respect to the majority view will impact on their reputations. If majority opinion suggests the accused is in the wrong he is obliged, if he wishes to retain his standing intact, to concede to the plaintiff ’s claim, with no one infringing his personal sovereignty, forcing him to comply: the

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sanction is loss of respect. Society features here as an analytical construct, comprising a set of commonly held values that individuals are brought up to share, and which, as seen in dispute resolution, inform their behavior. Settlement frequently involves payment of compensation, a material transaction that goes beyond the mere indemnification of a wrong. It is an act of exchange, which for the reciprocally motivated Wola defines sociability—previously involving various valuables (local symbols of sociality) and today cash—and marks the resumption of amicable interaction threatened by the disagreement. Equivalence is the cardinal principle informing settlement. The parties aim to balance the score between them, with a payment both making good the plaintiff ’s loss while simultaneously signaling friendly relations. If the wrongdoer stubbornly refuses, the wronged person may seek unilaterally to redress the balance. Such acts aim at securing equivalence, not meting out punishment. They may spark another dispute, even lead to a series of retaliatory encounters between related disputants. For wrongdoers may consider their actions justified, evening the score for some previous misdeed, which may in turn have sought to redress an even earlier wrong, and so on, one dispute enchained to another. It is no longer clear who is right or wrong, which relates to the absence of state-informed ideas of laws and justice. People know what is acceptable behavior, and have expectations of one another founded on acknowledged rights and duties, but transgressions are infringements of flexibly interpreted customary responsibilities, not trespasses against codified laws that carry stipulated punishments. They put no premium on justice. All those living in a locality will have some vested interests in the outcome of any dispute, being related in some way to one or both parties. The manner in which relatives routinely unite to support disputants reflects their partisan attitudes. The idea of a judge who can administer justice impartially according to the law is clearly out of place, which relates further to the inappropriateness of ideas about society intervening to impose punishment for threats to order. The informality of judicial concepts in this stateless polity results in fairer settlements in some senses, allowing for the unique social and historical circumstances surrounding any dispute. They continue today to deal with disputes this way in the Was Valley. The Australian colonial administration and subsequently the state of Papua New Guinea briefly subjected the Wola to courts of law and prison. The imposition in the 1970s, for example, of local “village courts” with elected appointees (the lus kiap in local pidgin, “loose government officers”),34 has been increasingly ignored since independence, paralleling the collapse of effective outside law enforcement. The intention was to involve local people in dispute settlement and avoid the sometimes arbitrary, to locals, imposition of settlements and sentences by foreigners using an alien judicial code (and to reduce time spent by salaried kiap, “government officers,” dealing with disputes). It was based on the foreign idea that nominated officeholders could mete out penalties to wrongdoers who threaten order. It potentially extended unheard-of authority to those nominated as lus kiap, which caused tension and resentment, and sometimes conflicts of interest when

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disputes involved their kin, and without strong central government backup, primarily in the way of police to impose “court” decisions, people came to perceive of the system as ineffective, if not subversive, and they returned to their former ways of dealing with differences, sometimes with violence and resurgence of “tribal warfare.” And they are now effectively independent of central government jurisdiction. The only people living elsewhere toward whom persons acknowledge an obligation to act considerately, and observe the mores of self-regulation, are kin and friends with whom they maintain relations. They may act with less consideration toward others, which means that if an opportunity presents itself they are more likely to try for some gain at their expense, although the interweaving of relations between the residents of one neighborhood and another reduces the likelihood of flagrantly unsocial acts. When disputes occur, both parties again argue their case, with varying support from their relatives, holding their tempers in check to varying extents, until they either reach some settlement satisfactory to both, or one resorts to some action to redress things in his favor. The dispute may then spin out of control, boiling over into open violence, the other party interpreting any unilateral act as a wrong. If there is a dispute between distantly or unrelated persons from different neighborhoods, they are more likely to resort to violence than residents of the same neighborhood, who will probably resolve their differences and reach a settlement by discussion, and if tempers do flare and a fight starts, others, not blinded by rage, usually intervene and part them. While the threat of aggression is an aspect of all political relations, both stateless and state, frequent acts of personal violence are usual in many acephalous polities, particularly those of large tribal populations such as occur in the New Guinea Highlands. Although aggression is a ubiquitous aspect of life, violence in the New Guinea Highlands is not as murderous as when states go to war with their deadly arsenals, even today, when men have access to firearms and hostilities are more dangerous than in previous bow-and-arrow times. The propensity for violence is a long-established feature of such densely settled stateless orders (for example, Evans-Pritchard 1940, 151). We should not romanticize the esteem these people accord equality without an appreciation of the violent costs. The militant egalitarianism of the Wola has its downside, with physical aggression an ever-present risk. When people cannot agree and become frustrated they may come to blows. Readiness to use one’s fists or worse is a cardinal aspect of the social order, to defend the integrity of one’s personal autonomy. No individual allows anyone else to dictate to him or her against his or her will. The proposition that aggression derives from the value accorded to individual sovereignty again challenges the “collective morality” interpretation of social life, which sees hostilities in terms of group solidarity, with clan in structural opposition to clan—or worse, as social breakdown, even anomie. The critical question if a fight erupts is whether or not it results in a death, for the relatives of someone killed violently have a moral duty to take revenge on the person responsible and his relatives. The result is open armed hostilities.35 It is unthinkable not to seek vengeance: the Wola maintain that any close kin who failed to honor this

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To view this image, please refer to the print version of this book.

Figure 3.3. Threatening violence, men wave axes and bows in a show of aggression

responsibility would seriously damage their social credibility. It is necessary to explain the existence of this moral obligation to understand the rationale of hostilities, not why individuals observe it: either for fear of losing face (only weaklings do not fight), or sanctions from others (they may not support you if later you are embroiled in a homicidal dispute), or out of grief (far too many fight for all to feel this emotion deeply enough to take up arms). The answer, I argue, relates to disputes occurring when some persons encroach on the rights and freedom of others beyond the limits accepted to facilitate social cooperation. When this happens, they should try to reason out a settlement in which both consider the others’ equal rights and resolve their differences without encroaching on these more than is necessary to effect a balance in their relations. But sometimes they become deadlocked over who is right and who wrong, and in frustration lose their tempers and resort to violence in an attempt to force opponents to accept their view. Violence is a bid to deprive others of their autonomy of action in some matter, and can result in the ultimate infringement of freedom, namely, the taking of life. If there was no threat of revenge, those involved in disputes might try to force one another to comply with each other’s views as a matter of course, an initially anarchic scenario giving the physically stronger access to power. This would portend the end of any equalitarian political relations, which rest on the axiom that no persons have access to power, that is, have the means or authority to force others to do things against their wishes, depriving them of their equal freedom of action and subjecting them to their will. The moral obligation to seek revenge prevents it. If someone tries to force another to do something against his wishes, and kills him when he struggles to maintain his sovereignty, he finds a group mobilized against him seeking revenge, which acts to keep power latent and out of people’s reach, according with Hobbes’s dictum that “freedom is power divided between many.” Also, anarchic circumstances where persons could wrong and kill with impunity those toward whom they recognized no obligation to regulate their behavior would render social life beyond a small circle of relatives dif-

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To view this image, please refer to the print version of this book.

Figure 3.4. Walking aid devised by a man with a leg wound caused by an arrow during armed hostilities

ficult. The threat of armed hostilities acts to constrain individuals, inclining them to control their behavior with distant kin and strangers, and not resort hastily to violence in disputes. Anyone who initiates armed hostilities assumes considerable responsibilities, being answerable for the deaths of all relatives who come to his assistance, which entails an extensive series of exchange payments, usually so onerous that a person’s descendants remain liable, it sometimes taking two or three generations to clear such transactional obligations. Engaging in hostilities, or pursuing any collective action (such as rituals, dances, wealth exchanges, pig festivals, and so on), presupposes that people organize themselves into groups. We have seen that the scope afforded individual action compromises any “collective sociology” view of these as corporate kin bodies to which persons acknowledge allegiance. There are no norms requiring them to support certain corporate groups (constituted by descent, residence, or whatever). Although action-sets sometimes correspond closely with neighborhoods, the implication is not that these are political corporations.36 It is due to residential propinquity: people are more likely to join in an activity with those they live among, and with whom they interact everyday, than they are with people residing elsewhere. In his discussion of Daribi “society,” Wagner (1974, 111) puts it well, saying that he “does not ‘start out’ with groups, since these are never deliberately organized,” but nonetheless “one ends up with specific bunches of people” that “suddenly” emerge in “concrete form.” He goes on, “The ‘permanent’

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sociality exists as an associational context flowing from one such ad hoc occasion to another,” such that “sociality is a ‘becoming,’ and not a ‘become,’ thing.” In his discussion of individual action in the Highlands, A. J. Strathern (1979, 102) says something similar for the Hageners, observing that “groups crystallize out of a set of individuals and their choices,” and that consequently “they are emergent.” Individuals are free to decide according to their personal interests—informed by the values inherited from their culture and shared with others—whether or not to participate with relatives and friends in a proposed collective activity, and if they deem it not to be to their advantage to join in, they are at liberty to abstain. The “collectivities”37 that form are pro tem gatherings of people who calculate that it is in their individual interests temporarily to coordinate their actions to achieve a particular goal. A collectivity with exactly the same membership may never form again. Various considerations prompt individuals to join such action-sets, including concern for their reputations, a wish to be in on and share the reflected glory of some large event, or to avail themselves of the advantages that come from several people combining forces to achieve some goal. The interests that prompt them to opt in or out as they judge best may implicitly include those of certain relatives too. They do not act wholly selfishly, that is, without regard to others, or as if unsocialized into a code of expected behavior between kin, but as Melanesian individuals who acknowledge attendant kin-interested dimensions, which ensure they take into account the effect of their actions on others. Entirely selfish acts (quadrant I, “Selfish Individualism”) are likely to be negative in their consequences, for others frown on such destructive behavior, which will diminish the miscreant’s social standing and likely undermine his or her interests long-term.38 While the collectivities that come together to undertake activities coalesce in an apparently amorphous fashion, they do not do so entirely randomly; kin interaction informs their composition. People are related to those with whom they daily interact locally, as is evident from the land tenure rules that underlie the configuration of residential clusters (chapter 4), and such locales act as nodes around which groups accrete via connections that radiate from those living there. Hence collectivities are not random alliances—that is, not just anybody is likely to associate with anyone else—and some occur predictably—that is, at exchange transactions people know who has responsibilities for what with respect to others, as these are culturally defined (Sillitoe 1979b). The formation of groups becomes clear when we see neighborhoods as close-knit networks, as described above, within which residents have many-stranded face-to-face relationships with one another, and outside which they maintain separate, notwithstanding overlapping networks of relations. Action-sets coalesce through the network, extending out from those who moot an event. When a few persons instigate an activity they can expect support from some relatives in their neighborhood with whom they interact constantly—these will comprise the focal group for the event. In turn, some of these persons’ relatives from elsewhere may join in and possibly even recruit a few people from their networks. Consequently, a person may potentially join in activities initiated

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at several places where she or he maintains meaningful social relations: that is, recognizes moral obligations and responsibilities to some residents, and may claim access to land. In many societies, the organization of people into groups presumes some kind of leadership to coordinate their actions, but this is not so for the Wola.39 When several persons combine together, they reach decisions and synchronize their actions by discussing matters until the majority opinion becomes clear. They commonly arrive at a consensus over a period of time as prospective participants in any event discuss arrangements among themselves—except when hostilities suddenly erupt, in which case action-sets spontaneously coalesce. They may never come together as an entire group to deliberate, doing so in smaller comings-together, between which some persons move, being present when “talk” occurs. All have a right to voice their opinions in these discussions, when they try to persuade one another to act in ways most beneficial to them individually and to their close kin, their success depending largely upon the advantages their proposals offer to those they are trying to influence. But some men may have more influence than others and hence a better chance of swaying opinions and modifying plans to their advantage, although they cannot by virtue of the respect they command force others to follow their wishes. They are the ol howma (men of the clearing) introduced in chapter 1. Inequality is inherent in any social situation, as pointed out earlier, for no two humans are the same. Those who excel in activities that their cultural order socializes all to value will achieve respect and, as first among their peers, some influence. While this threatens equal relations and could detract from others’ freedom of action, we find such mushrooming inhibited and institutionalized political power isolated out of reach, renowned status being achieved, not inherited, action-sets dispensing with leadership, and so on. In short, these arrangements discourage individuals from seeking political control. They are inspired to act for self, not any group they may misguidedly aspire to lead. “Men of the clearing” contrast markedly with the Melanesian leader stereotype found in the anthropological literature, inspired by Oliver’s (1955) account of the Siuai of Bougainville (where Austronesian/Polynesian ideas of hierarchy and chiefs have some influence—absent in the Highlands), bolstered by Sahlins’s (1963) comparative paper with the entertaining title of “Rich Man, Poor Man, Big Man, Chief,” and subsequently coming to prominence in the work of several other big names (for example, Meggitt 1965; A. J. Strathern 1969, 1971; Berndt and Lawrence 1973; Godelier and A. M. Strathern 1991). They differ from prominent persons elsewhere in the Highlands, such as Hagen, where, according to Andrew Strathern (pers. comm.), “What significant big-men endeavored to bring about was the co-ordination of individual choices into a relational matrix that ultimately defined inter-group relations,” a view that Marilyn Strathern (1981, 182–83) elaborates on further, observing, “Big-men see themselves as manipulating others”40 as they strive “to create a situation in which clan enterprises and their own ambitions are reciprocally enhancing,” and their renown depends on

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“being seen to have engineered solidarity,” although it is in their interests “that such action should not be perceived as mechanical but as the combining of multitudinous self-governing individuals” whom they draw together. The giveaways to the “collective sociology” perspective are engineering of “solidarity” and its (albeit disguised) “mechanical” nature.41 No ideology of clanship informs the constitution of collectivities that come together in the Was Valley, nor do people talk of such groups acting in the name of corporate entities; rather, they are associations of individuals whose interests coincide at that time with respect to that activity—these interests informed by a moral code and cultural values shared by all. It is not social solidarity but network integrity that is important. While they may sometimes comment that some persons affiliated with the same sem are acting together, this is not in the sense that they are acting in the interests of that corporate grouping but rather a reference to the inevitable makeup of the collectivity, given its neighborhood-focused mode of recruitment as described, and may serve as a shorthand reference to its identity (that is, there is no need to specify those likely involved as the members of a sem are widely known). Among the Wola any collective act emerges from the interaction of all participants: no leaders finagle it. The “social achievement” of bringing together “multiple personal interests” is a collective feat, not down to particular “big men” nor focused on “clan” corporations. Otherwise what A. M. Strathern (1981, 183) describes is reminiscent of the Was Valley, with men only able “to act in the light of their own interests . . . at the cost of attributing this autonomy to others also,” such that “collective action” is “based on a perceived mutuality of interest.” (Furthermore, it is a peculiar kind of solidarity where the participants in any collective action do not see themselves engaging in it in support of the group qua group, mustered and represented by a leader, but rather in their own interests.)

Exchange and the Wola Order “Men of the clearing” achieve respect, which carries some influence, because they excel in activities central to balancing between the opposed interests of individual autonomy and social control. These activities center on sociopolitical exchanges. All agree that persons aspiring to respected ol howma status have constantly to handle many valuables and show themselves adroit managers of wealth. Finally, this brings us to exchange, which, involving the transaction of material items, we might assume falls into our domain of the economy and, linked with the political concerns above, takes us on to the Wola political economy. The foregoing brief review of the stateless Wola polity, in which are embedded any “economic” arrangements, intimates the crucial part exchange plays in social life. The importance accorded to the transactional values and complex norms that structure the conduct of exchange indicates its centrality to the acephalous egalitarian order (Ryan 1961; Sillitoe 1979b; Lederman 1986b; Nihill 1986). These arrangements extend on exchange as an element in any interaction in which human beings compete for all manner of returns, as alluded to in discussing social transactionalism (chapter 2). They comprise an extensive social institution, with rules founded to oblige

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Figure 3.5. Discussing an ol gwat (mortuary exchange), with wealth displayed along fence

participation, encouraging concordant interaction in an otherwise fissile-constituted, densely settled population that extends persons considerable autonomy. Exchange obligations ensure that on specific social occasions people regularly come together in a synergic spirit. While men may not agree in all exchanges, poor payments resulting in arguments not conducive to social order, the overall effect of obliging them to pass wealth around is the fostering of sociality. A bridewealth, for example, brings new affines together, and not only symbolizes the creation of their newfound relations but is also the first in a series of transactions that will promote dependable interaction. The ramifying sequence of a mortuary exchange, on the other hand, focuses attention on and reinforces relations weakened by a death. Similarly, the reparation series that follows a violent death is not mere compensation to the deceased’s kin, it is a statement by the party responsible that it was unintentional and they do not wish the death to terminate their relationship. The point that any death disrupts the social network of which the deceased was a party takes on a particular significance when viewed from the immanent sociality perspective of the “new Melanesian ethnography” that posits persons are defined and constituted by the relations they recognize and continually negotiate with others. Attitudes toward informal saen (debt) transactions mentioned previously (chapter 2) underline the significance of formal exchange arrangements. Selfish interests may prompt individuals to renege on such debts if they can get away with it. Friends owe me many shells and much cash in saen incurred over the years and act sheepishly when I mention them or, if enough time has elapsed for plausible memory loss, they deny them (some probably have genuinely forgotten them). They behave in this way because such deals are entered into privately, not within the formal exchange domain, which is public and where persons come under considerable pressure to meet their responsibilities and default leads to loss of face. Securing repayment of such debts can demand assiduous reminding, and even pestering of some individuals, and I think that this is one of the skills of ol howma men of renown, together with an ability to avoid dodgy creditors.

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This interpretation of exchange as fostering network sociality challenges the “collective conscience” view, which construes it in terms of group solidarity, big man–led clan against rival clan. It is not that I argue that “group considerations are irrelevant or epi-phenomenal to exchange, and that only individual interests and competition need to be taken into account” (A. J. Strathern 1979, 105). After all, to give and take in such sociopolitical transactions demands a degree of collaboration. My view also differs radically from the “moral person” interpretation of exchange that draws heavily on Mauss (1970) and, as pointed out, dominates Melanesian anthropology. A question that fascinated Mauss was why people bother to reciprocate gifts.42 According to him we cannot understand the triple obligation of social exchange (to give → to receive → to repay) in terms of self-interest, only in the context of interpersonal and intergroup relations, for “it is groups, and not individuals, which carry on exchange, make contracts, and are bound by obligations; the persons represented in the contracts are moral persons” (3). In this view, the “morality” of exchange resides in relationships between social groups or their representatives; transactions create social bonds, tying not only one person to another in social groups, but also segments of society together. Mauss talks about a force residing in gifts that compels a return, drawing on the Maori concept of hau, which he interprets as the giver’s spiritual essence imbuing a gift and obliging the recipient to repay. After reviewing a range of other ethnography, he claims that the obligation to reciprocate “is first and foremost a pattern of spiritual bonds between things which are to some extent parts of persons, and persons and groups that behave in some measure as if they were things” (11). He thinks that the Maori make explicit with their hau concept what is implicit in giving elsewhere. When he maintains, for instance, that Trobrianders in the kula are “actuated by the mechanisms of obligation which are resident in the gifts themselves” (21), we interpret him to mean that their gifts, symbolizing relations between exchanging groups, are charged with a moral power that ensures their return.43 This is the morality of the gift. And the ambiguous comment about “persons behaving as things” has subsequently recurred many times in Melanesian anthropology: for example, in her exposition of Melanesian philosophy A. M. Strathern (1988, 178) claims that an item “stands for that part of the donor invested in the relationship . . . in ceremonial exchange transactions, things are conceptualised as parts of persons.” My experience of the New Guinea Highlands gives me a different understanding. The principle of effort and reward, inherent in all social interaction, and withdrawal of people from relationships in which there is nothing for them—as illustrated in the above discussion of agent-based modeling—explains in part why the Wola endeavor to meet their exchange commitments. Those who fail to honor an obligation will find the other party withdrawing from the relationship, often after a dispute about the failure, and such behavior disrupts social interaction with others, who judge such persons untrustworthy. Individuals’ interests in their social reputations reinforce these concerns: their culture not only impresses on them a high regard for the exchange of wealth, but also that their reputations depend on living up to the norms instituted to ensure its steady circulation. The replies they give when asked why they bother to meet exchange

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commitments show this: besides pointing out that not to do so causes trouble, people say they are obliged to—it is unthinkable not to (like failure to honor revenge obligations). Not to execute one’s commitments, they say, is the hallmark of the disreputable and the fool, whereas those who do so well are respected and “have names.” Here collectively held values inform individual behavior. The esteeming of individual political sovereignty clearly does not imply the absence of an inherited cultural code, individuals behaving as if socially disconnected or totally free—an inconceivable state of affairs for humans, as pointed out. We see the exploitation of the opposed competitive side of exchange to spur individuals onto better things. By definition, persons must continually hand valuables around to achieve the necessary sociopolitical effects, and their success is measured not by what they own but by the quantity and quality of the wealth that passes through their hands. The objective is to secure good payments to pass the things on again. In return for their efforts the successful win others’ esteem. Exchange is well fitted in this stateless context to resolve the apparent conflict that exists between collective and individual interests because it not only implies sociability, so endorsing communality, but also allows competition (McDowell 1990), so appealing to individuality. Self-interest drives persons to compete, to give more than the next, and so achieve intangible rewards such as respect, renown, influence, and so on. But by competing in this way they are promoting sociality, acting in the community’s wider interests. The balance struck between individual and collective interests via the mediation of exchange facilitates a high degree of personal political autonomy. The competitive aspect of exchange induces persons to participate and meet their commitments without any overt force or ineffable spiritual power or authoritative officeholder encroaching on their apparent freedom to determine their own actions: a cardinal provision in any egalitarian acephalous polity, extending to the individual the maximum degree of liberty compatible with the existence of orderly social relations. It is analogous to Adam Smith’s “hidden hand” effect which, as mentioned, has individuals unwittingly serving the interests of all in pursuing their own interests, on the proposition that “self-love works for the common good” (Dumont 1977, 63), but in an entirely different transactional context to the capitalist market. In short, similar forces are evident in individual behavior in the Was Valley to those proposed by the founding father of capitalist economics, albeit in radically different circumstances. In Smith’s own words, “Every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. . . . He intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention” (1904, 1:421).44 It is an example of what the Nobel economist Vernon Smith (2003, 470) calls “emergent order,” where people coincidentally “promote group welfare–enhancing social ends” through the “workings of unseen processes.” What is the relevance of this correlation: is it a chance correspondence or does it signify that the ideas of economics may at a deep level have some relevance to the Wola? According to Dalton it signifies nothing, for after inviting me to contribute to a volume of Research

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in Economic Anthropology that he was editing, he rejected my paper discussing Wola transactional arrangements, as outlined above, on the grounds, ironically for a “substantivist,” that it gave insufficient attention to matters recognizably (that is, formally) economic, reading too much like “French anthropology” of the time. We have seen that Dalton considers capitalist economic concepts inapplicable to other social orders, and he was unimpressed at me drawing on them in this way, identifying self-interest as prominent in individuals’ behavior, albeit expressed in a thoroughly dissimilar cultural context to capitalism, with an “economy” of such an entirely different order to the market one to which our economic thought applies that he could see no connection with economic anthropology. The parallels are highly suggestive, I think, and show the way in which we might apply the assumptions of economics in radically alternative circumstances. They suggest that formal economic concepts may have a certain relevance, although the cultural implications may be quite different. The assumption of individual self-interest is only one of the premises that feature in our definition of economics, and having demonstrated that it informs Wola conduct—albeit balanced against a contradictory tendency common to all humankind for collective interest to guide behavior—it is necessary to assess the validity of the other assumptions. This brings us to scarcity again and the associated need to make choices.

CHAPTER 4

Land Tenure and the Collective-Interests Individual

L

and is one of the factors of production identified by economists and its availability is central to an agricultural economy. It is a finite, and hence potentially scarce, resource. Land tenure arrangements, the topic of this chapter, should tell us something about how people perceive its supply. They relate also to the sociopolitical issues discussed in the previous chapters and tell us more about the constitution of local communities. The Wola claim use rights, but not ownership and disposal rights to land, by virtue of acknowledged exchange-validated connections to their kindefined, locally constituted sem corporations. These differ dramatically from capitalistic notions of legally defined and bounded land areas to which the title holders claim exclusive rights to determine use, lease, and sale; where we find land arranged in defined parcels for perpetuity, owners negotiating use and ownership through the market. The Wola see their relations to land quite differently, illustrating again the fundamental conceptual divide between egalitarian stateless orders and hierarchical state ones. Access to land features prominently in the constitution of the sem groups from whence networked individual interaction radiates throughout and beyond the Was Valley. It underpins the existence of these kin groups, their members jointly validating rights over areas of territory and together affirming possession of unclaimed, often forested regions (Sillitoe 1979b; Lederman 1986b). It relates to a third facet of Melanesian individualism, which I call the collective-interests individual. The operation of the land tenure system, notably the occasional disputes over it, reveals how individuals consider not only self- and other interests but also collective interests. Furthermore, people’s relation to their land tells us something about individual and collective identity, the intriguing Wola amalgam of these two aspects of the person affording the individual some prominence, again contradicting the orthodox “collective morality” view of small-

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scale social orders. Land features in Wola life not merely materially as a productive resource but also socially and sentimentally. The principles of tenure relate persons through kinship to their land. Rights to land are one of the principal arenas in which they express and act on their kinship and identity relations, with kin-defined obligations controlling access and passage between generations (Kaitilla 1995; A. J. Strathern and Stewart 1998b). The communities that result from the working of the land tenure system, which are predictably somewhat nebulous with the scope afforded to personal autonomy, raise further issues regarding the stateless polity, returning us to political issues that are central to understanding aspects of the “economy.” While land is immovable, New Guinea Highlanders contrive to introduce an element of motion to it. This reflects something of the fluidity of their social life, the fuzzy status of defined categories and associated boundaries, and the mutability of the social corporations that to some extent inform their social relations. The relativity of land rights among the Wola, their ambiguous and multifaceted nature, reflects their social order—which may be characterized as constantly in kaleidoscopic flux, like other exchange-founded Central Highland systems that have featured significantly in the revision of anthropological understanding of stateless tribal political process in the last three decades or so (Feil 1984; Merlan and Rumsey 1991; A. M. Strathern 1988; A. J. Strathern and Stewart 2004). Attitudes to group identities and boundary definition are intrinsic to the region’s acephalous political-economic arrangements. They render some anthropological perspectives inapposite, notably those that argue for defined categories, hierarchical arrangements, and dialectical structures. The upshot is a land tenure system that is deceptively simple in principle but complex in practice.

Land Tenure in Principle When looking for new garden sites, a first consideration is where you have rights of access to land. In theory, if not in practice, the land tenure system restricts farmers’ choices to certain parts of territories where they can claim rights of cultivation. The principles that define these rights, which have a normative aspect, are fairly straightforward. They have their origins in the mythical past. The Wola account for, and justify, current arrangements by reference to their appearance long ago with the genesis of local communities. The accounts that relate the foundation of these land-guarding corporations, called ol maerizor injiy (literally, man bear story), frequently refer to some union in the mythical past between a human being and an animal or a plant that gave birth to the first settler on the territory claimed by the sem community currently resident there. The following origin story, which relates to the foundation of a sem called Silol, is typical of the genre:1 Long ago there was a girl called Berepgaembin who lived all alone in these parts. One day a yaeliyp marsupial2 saw her from a tree at Hezndal. He spied her from

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the branch of a pel tree3 from which he had stripped the leaves to have a good view over the surrounding country. He noticed that the girl seemed to sit around all day. She had no children, although he saw that she had one tiny brother who sat with her. The marsupial was curious and stealthily approached closer under cover of the dense sword grass surrounding the house. He noticed that there was a length of stout taembok bamboo4 stem leaning against the house roof like a ladder, and that adjacent to it there was a small hole in the house wall. He climbed unseen up the pole and quietly enlarged the hole. When the girl and the small boy were asleep the marsupial returned. He squeezed into the house and slept with the girl. She became pregnant and gave birth to a boy. The marsupial continued to come nightly and sleep cuddled up to her. Every morning Berepgaembin could smell the strong scent of marsupial, and she would find a bunch of pel tree leaves in her small son’s hands, which the marsupial brought along for his son, as parents give children pork, and fish and rice. The young woman was puzzled and frequently searched for the marsupial of a morning. One day she determined to feign sleep and see what happened. The yaeliyp marsupial squeezed in as usual and snuggled up beside her. “Aiyow!” She saw that the father of her son was an enormous marsupial. The sem “families” now in this area—Taenk, Niypa, Waeng, Shuwol and Luwimb—originate from this man, as he subsequently married and had a family. The communities so founded are the larger named territorial groups of today called semonda (literally, family-large), as described previously. They have expanded over the generations, subsequently dividing internally into smaller named groups called semg enk (literally, family-small). The descendants of the mythical founder have split the territory between them over the years, and the current-day small groups of land-owning kin spring from them, subject to further gradual fission as their numbers increase with today’s population growth (chapter 7). These groups have an agnatic bias, both in practice (men preferring, as pointed out, to reside where there fathers did before them) and in ideology (people distinguishing migrant-founded branches that derive from female descendants of original founders). The territories associated with sem are not discrete and clearly bounded, but comprise parcels of land interdigitated with similar areas claimed by others. The gardens of households associated with different sem consequently form a mosaic across any region and are not collected together into large territorial blocks (see chapter 6 on garden geography). The rag-rug effect confounds boundaries, patches claimed by different kin groups running one into another.5 This pattern reflects the operation of the land tenure system over many generations, “moving” boundaries and plots of land between kin groups and mixing them up across regions.6 It obfuscates potential boundaries by greatly multiplying their number. Furthermore, this dispersal of small semg enk landholdings across the territory of larger semonda ensures that there is no monopoly over rights to land in any locality. No group has exclusive access to any large tract of arable land. Any tendency toward this is further subverted by the expectation that temporary cultivation rights are likely to be granted on request.

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It is usually men who claim rights to cultivable land, although in deciding the location of new gardens they frequently consult female relatives who will till and plant new swiddens, notably wife(s), particularly if they intend to cultivate on land claimed through connections to their kin. A man can claim rights to land in a number of ways (see Hogbin and Lawrence 1967; Crocombe 1971; Lundsgaarde 1974; Rodman 1987; and Lea 1997 for comparative land tenure accounts elsewhere in Melanesia). He can cultivate any land unclaimed by others on the territories over which access rights are controlled by any semg enk to which he is related, and where he maintains exchangevalidated social relations with residents. This land is hombuwnon suw (literally, everybody’s land), accessible to all those with rights there. It will include virgin forest and areas of secondary regrowth to which no one claims prior rights: that is, no relatives have gardened in living memory. Once someone clears and cultivates an area, use title passes from the semg enk to him and his descendants, so long as the title is remembered, which presupposes recultivation at intervals to keep it alive. The tenure arrangements of the Wola extend “claimants’” rights, according to the scheme of Schlager and Ostrom (1992)—see table 4.1. Gardeners can claim access, harvest (withdrawal), and management rights. The tenure principles also determine definition and transfer of access rights (exclusion) and may be subject to collective negotiation, as related below, investing in the sem group, not the gardening household, the rights of “proprietor.” The idea of alienation is foreign, although if for some reason rights to land were challenged—for example, in a mineral extraction development—the sem group7 would again assume collectively the “owner” role—for instance, to negotiate royalties. A man may stake a prior right to garden land used previously by one of his forebears, perhaps sharing it with his siblings or other close collateral kin, depending on relations. Claims by children for land cultivated previously by their parents take precedence. When necessary, other claims are nominally negotiated according to the closeness of the relationship between previous and current gardeners. These prior rights to use land pass to, and through, both males and females. A person may claim rights to land cleared before by his father, his mother’s or wife’s father or, title to land passing on through several generations so long as remembered and acknowledged, by his mother’s mother’s father or father’s mother’s father or some other distant ancestor. But claims to land not used for some generations are uncommon. Other descendants of the ancestor are likely to have cultivated it, especially if it is in a desirable location with favorable physical or other characteristics, and prior rights will reside with them and their children. Also, a man will not try to move in with and cultivate land on the territory of distantly related kin, particularly if they are comparative strangers with whom he has kept up only desultory social, notably exchange, relations. Land claimed through fathers is abon suw (literally, father’s land), through mothers is amon suw (literally, mother’s land), and through wives is weren suw (literally, wife’s land). A person can claim rights to his mother’s land title whether or not his father

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Table 4.1. Definitions of land rights Rights & definitions

Owner

Proprietor

Claimant

User

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

Operational level Access (right to enter defined physical property) Withdrawal (right to obtain “products” of resource) Collective choice level Management (right to regulate internal use and make improvements) Exclusion (right to determine access rights and how rights are transferred) Alienation (right to sell or lease or both the collective choice rights)

✓

Source: Adapted from Schlager and Ostrom 1992.

claimed this land through her as his wife, so long as it has not been usurped in the previous generation by her siblings and their children. Rights to land claimed through female title pass to a man’s children, but if he has more than one wife, only his children by the woman through whom he claims title inherit rights, not co-wives’ children. But there are exceptions, which is in keeping with the flexible interpretation of these rules and the point made earlier about individuals maneuvering around and not dutifully following such precepts. Some men, consequently, make anomalous claims to land, such as that cultivated through co-mother’s connections, sibling’s affines or by stepfathers, and on the territory of semg enk to which they strictly have no consanguineal or affinal ties. The use of such land with no inheritable rights is obuw hae (literally, come stand). All of a couple’s children, both their sons and daughters, learn where their relatives have cultivated previously, acquiring this knowledge informally as they grow up and kin tell them who gardened where. They have equal rights with their respective spouses to cultivate both their parents’ old garden sites and those of more distant forebears if not claimed by other relatives, and other locales on their sem territories where other kin have not established prior rights through cultivation. If more than one of these persons and their families wish to cultivate a previous garden site, they divide the area among themselves. Parents do not divide the land to which they have first-claim rights between their children before they die; the offspring inherit joint rights and sort out individual shares when the time comes that they decide to cultivate a garden. The schematic genealogy (figure 4.1) illustrates the principles that govern access to garden land. The hatched-in symbols represent individuals who belonged to and

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Figure 4.1. Schematic genealogy illustrating land tenure principles

cultivated land on the territory of a hypothetical semg enk; the blank symbols represent descendants of man A who have resided and gardened land elsewhere, who could if they wished have claimed rights to land on the hypothetical semg enk territory. The rectangles represent areas cleared and cultivated, and the alphabetized persons8 gardened them as follows: A: gardened a b c d e B: gardened a b c d D: gardened a b f * F: gardened c d

H: gardened a f g* J: gardened b (migrant) N: gardened c d h* Q: gardened e i*

The land tenure principles illustrated in the figure are straightforward: any descendants of a couple have the right to cultivate areas previously gardened by them, until either forgotten, because nobody takes them up, or a contemporary relative acts on them, in which event the prior (but not sole) rights pass to that person’s descendants in preference to other collateral descendants of the previous gardeners. On the genealogy, land cultivated by A has been claimed by various descendants in the following generations, together with previously unclaimed land from the sem pool, in various permutations that comply with the foregoing principles. In the case of individual H, he had a prior claim to area b by virtue of his father’s, D’s, cultivation of it but has forgone this in favor of his cross-cousin’s husband, J. Whereas N, who has a prior right to area d because his father, F, farmed it, has cultivated it without sharing it with O or P’s husband, Q. In this example, P and Q have returned to reside and cultivate on the semg enk territory after two previous generations have lived elsewhere, and it

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is possible that people will have forgotten that A gardened area e, in which event they may garden this, together with area i, as land taken from the pool held in common by the semg enk. The figure also illustrates—with areas f, g, h, and i—the slow expansion of the area under cultivation that is taking place under this system as in each generation men clear and farm areas held in the semg enk pool, some of which land will have never been gardened before (see chapter 7 on population growth). There is some indication that people act on particular rights to land in preference to others when establishing different kinds of garden (table 4.2).9 Nonetheless, all three kinds of cultivation—sweet potato, taro, or mixed-vegetable—occur in broadly comparable proportions across all tenure alternatives, which is expectable, for there is no apparent reason why any one would be better situated according to certain tenure rights above others. The exception is tenure-type “rights through wife” to “mixed-vegetable” gardens, which according to the χ 2 test residuals occur significantly less frequently; this is understandable, these gardens being largely sited near to homesteads and families infrequently opting to reside on the wife’s land. If no descendant cultivates an area farmed previously by a forebear, and so gains prior rights to it, his successors do not formally forfeit their claim to the land. The loss of first-claim rights is a gradual process. So long as some members of the sem recall the site’s previous cultivation, anyone descended from the gardener(s) could potentially claim the right to cultivate there, establishing prior rights for his descendants. These rights remain in the possession of a person’s descendants until people forget them. This happens after a few generations if nobody renews the rights by clearing the land for a garden. The gradual manner in which prior rights fade away reflects the notions of continuity and flow that characterize Wola life, as opposed to those of disjunction and boundedness. When rights to unclaimed areas slip from the collective memory, the land passes back by default into the hombuwnon suw land pool held jointly by the semg enk. If someone dies without offspring, his land could potentially pass back into the semg enk pool more quickly, although a close relative of the deceased (for example, brother, nephew, or one of their descendants) may stake a prior claim to it. The land tenure regime is one that features common property rights. These challenge the assumptions of the dominant economic view regarding scarce resources, that self-interested profit-seeking behavior by individuals or companies is inevitable. They feature collectives that prioritize sustainability and even equity of resource access, prompting quite different behavior. In common property (or common pool) regimes local communities regulate access to resources that they hold jointly and may manage collectively: they are self-governing collectives owning property in common (Ostrom 1990; Bromley 1992; Bardhan and Ray 2008). While they afford members right of use, they exclude others; in economic-speak, resources are common goods to insiders and private goods to outsiders. They have collectively enforceable rules defining access and exclusion from resources, their use and management (table 4.1), and also procedures to constrain behavior, arbitrating differences and sanctioning trespass or wrongful use.

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Table 4.2. Land tenure compared with garden type Inheritable Rights through father No. gdns.

%

Area (m2)

Rights through mother %

No. gdns.

Sweet potato gardens (hokay em) 256 74.2 297,876 91.1 80 Taro gardens (ma em) 41 11.9 20,967

6.4

6

% 79.2

Area (m2)

%

91,022 92.0

Rights through wife No. gdns.

%

94

86.2

Area (m2)

%

66,452 93.1

5.9

4,640

4.7

12

11.0

4,522

6.3

Small mixed-vegetable gardens (em g emb) 48 13.9 8,190 2.5 15 14.9

3,284

3.3

3

2.8

368

0.5

Notes: According to the frequency counts, land tenure and garden type are independent at the 1% significance level but not at the 5% level, χ2 = 9.2, df = 8, p = 0.014. According to area of gardens, fitting a linear model with square root of area as response and calculating an analysis of variance (ANOVA), both tenure and crop type vary significantly (by tenure: F = 9.9, df = 4, p = 8.99 × 10−8; and by crop type: F = 117.1, df = 2). % worked out as % for that category—i.e., 15 em g emb on M’s land: 15/101 × 100 = 14.9% (of total no. gardens on M’s land). The fitted model indicates that sweet potato gardens cultivated through father or mother rights will be relatively large, and mixed-vegetable gardens through wife or affines will be relatively small, which complies with the pattern of mean garden size, as follows:

Sweet potato Taro Mixed-vegetable

Father

Mother

Wife

Distant consanguineal

Affinal

1163.6 511.4 170.6

1137.8 773.3 218.9

706.9 376.8 122.7

1087.9 379.3 227.1

834.5 126 133.25

These regimes illustrate some of the points made in the previous chapter about the economics of collective action and cooperative behavior, that it is rational for even the self-interested to think of others in their actions because outright short-term selfish behavior loses the long-term benefits of cooperation (Olson 1965; Axelrod 1984; Gintis et al. 2005). During the last two decades or so common property regimes have increasingly attracted interest, particularly in economic development contexts. Attempts to manage natural resources through either private ownership and market forces or state ownership and public administration have often proved ineffective and resulted in resource

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Noninheritable Distant consanguineal No. gdns.

%

Area (m2)

39

73.6

7

13.2

2,655

7

13.2

1,590

Affinal No. gdns.

%

43

89.6

5.7

1

2.1

126

0.3

3.4

4

8.3

533

1.5

%

42,428 90.9

Area (m2)

%

35,882 98.2

degradation, whereas common property regimes may be more efficient and equitable, and are increasingly drawn on to manage resources such as forests, irrigation, pastures, and fisheries more effectively, often under so-called co-management arrangements. According to Baland and Platteau (1996, 175), “Regulated common property and private property are equivalent from the viewpoint of the efficiency of resource use.” They feature in the capitalist United States and in Europe, too, where user groups manage commonly held resources such as watersheds, aquifers, and fisheries. Indeed, it is increasingly apparent that we have much to learn from common property arrangements as we seek to avert destruction of the global commons, increasingly evident in atmospheric pollution and climate change, which is the result of market economic arrangements that allow companies to treat environmental costs as “externalities” (that is, pollution resulting from their activities is not a cost they have to count in turning a profit—but falls on the entire community). By the way, collective-cum-commons arrangements also illustrate the point made in the discussion of variability in chapter 2 with respect to “Western” society comparisons; as an alternative to the dominant capitalist view of economics, they show how the “West” is not a monolithic sociocultural entity even with respect to economic ideas. The viability of common property regimes is of some interest, in making sustainability and equity of access rational outcomes for individuals, as constrained by the collectives they belong to. According to orthodox economic thought, they are inefficient and should not exist; as Dahlman (1980, 5) puts it for the English open field system, “From the standpoint of economic theory, the received doctrine is very clear: communal ownership and decisionmaking are inherently inefficient.” The so-called tragedy

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of the commons puts this view succinctly, asserting that where users hold a resource jointly they are motivated to exploit it to the maximum, ultimately destroying it through overexploitation. Any who restrict their use to conserve the resource and promote its sustainability long term see others take the opportunity to increase their use of it. There is consequently no incentive to forgo selfishly maximizing current benefits. In short, if there is open access, individual and common interests will conflict, self-interested individuals acting to maximize their returns at the cost of the common resource because to behave in any other way is to lose out. All scrabble to grab what they can. They will literally graze their pasture to barrenness, deforest their woodland, and overfish their common waters. But the world abounds with examples of common property regimes that defy this gloomy economic scenario. And they have endured for generations. Dahlman (1980, 4), for example, asks “why did the open field system ever exist if it was so inefficient” and how to “account for the predominance of the system across Europe and why it persisted for centuries,” dismissing as not credible arguments about “dumb peasants or dumb landlords.” The Was Valley is a contemporary example, one of many successful common property regimes in the New Guinea Highlands, let alone globally. We know that farmers have occupied this region for millennia and yet they have not visited a “tragedy of the commons” on their collectively held resources in all that time. They clearly challenge the formal economic view that in seeking to maximize their satisfactions individuals inevitably behave self-interestedly and will destroy commonly owned resources. Large areas under open-access sem trusteeship further suggest that land scarcity is not an issue in the Was region—certainly not sufficiently to prompt more restricted rights, anyway. But some economic assumptions may nonetheless have pertinence. The Was Valley system features a combination of common and household property regimes. While kin-constituted corporations hold uncultivated land including forest in common, households hold cultivated land so long as they claim it through the generations. It is a combination that invites an eclectic approach, as this book advocates, with some economic assumptions possibly relevant sometimes, where households effectively hold land privately, but not others, where kin corporations publicly look out for it. A problem with common property arrangements standing as an alternative to classic economic views is the absence of an overarching integrated theory to match that of economics (albeit the latter is based on a highly simplistic view of humanity). We have increasing numbers of case studies that detail various regimes (anthropology abounds with them, dating back decades before common property became a popular field), but attempts to synthesize anything general from these are largely lists of obvious and not so obvious traits, that fail to come anywhere near a theory incorporating a set of principles to account for such arrangements. In a widely cited attempt to identify the characteristics of common property systems, Ostrom (1990, 90) lists the following: clearly defined boundaries, sustainable use, participation of users in decision making,

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effective monitoring of resource use, graduated sanctions for rule breakers, effective conflict resolution mechanisms, independent self-government, and nested organization. In a subsequent comprehensive review, Baland and Platteau (1996, 343–45) list further diagnostic characteristics, which Agrawal (2008, 55) expands to thirty-three. The impression is of too many variables for meaningful analysis, a common problem in cross-cultural comparison in anthropology. The assumption that there is one alternative theory of common property is possibly wrongheaded, reflecting the questionable idea, as pointed out in chapter 1, that we can subsume all other economies of the world into a single model. In its attempt to synthesize a set of principles relevant to a single valley in the New Guinea Highlands, equality of access to resources is a key feature of the common property regime from this book’s perspective. It is a feature of many common property regimes; in the Northumbrian open field system, for instance, each household had its cultivated strips scattered “‘rigge by rigge10 to his nighbour accordying to the old devysion of land in this countrye’ . . . with the object of ensuring equitable allotments of good and bad land” (Kerridge 1992, 53).

Land Tenure in Practice The rules controlling land tenure have a wide bilateral scope, but Wola attitudes to them allow for even wider interpretation, to the point where families may gain access to almost any currently unused land that they are likely to want to cultivate. While the above principles supply a framework endorsing land rights and ordering people’s claims, they are not absolute, restricting them only to land they define as available to them (Panoff 1970; Brown, Brookfield, and Grau 1990). This returns us to the academic distinction discussed in the previous two chapters between “normative persons” and “maneuvering individuals” and the argument that we need to accommodate both in any understanding of behavior. Land tenure arrangements and negotiations support this view, affording an illustration of how real life is an amalgamation. The previous section gives the collectively agreed norms and this one describes the scope for individual “norm-bending” calculation. The principles outlined afford households access to land to which they have full farming entitlement with no objections from others (subject to agreeing with kin the sharing of any jointly inherited rights). But sometimes families want to garden land to which they have no rights as defined by these principles, usually because it is convenient for them (for example, the land is near to their homes or other gardens). When they wish to farm such areas they approach the individual(s) who have rights to them and ask for permission to clear and cultivate them. The granting of such requests depends upon the circumstances that surround them: for example, whether or not the owners have plans to cultivate the areas themselves in the near future and their relationship with those making the request. It is common for rights holders to give permission, so long as they

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have no plans to cultivate the land and they are on good terms with those seeking approval. When someone seeks permission to cultivate on another’s land, people say that it pleases him; they call such land use suw turiy homay (literally, land happy feel).11 These easygoing attitudes to land access further suggest that it is not thought a scarce resource. We should anticipate that people would observe the tenure rules closely if they did and jealously guard their rights to use land. While certain principles define land entitlement, in actuality they can secure permission to use nearly any site not currently under cultivation that they may wish to farm. It is uncommon for those who claim title to demand any payment for the use of areas: that is, rent land for cultivation. When such payments occur they have a sociable as opposed to an economic aspect to them. Out of several hundred gardens surveyed in the Was Valley, for example, only one, occupying an area of 418 m2, featured any payment from the gardener to the land rights holder. The two men were resident members of the same semonda, good friends and both of renowned ol howma status, and the giving of a pearl shell had a strong element of competitive sociability; it was also partly to reimburse the rights holder, who had cleared some of the area of vegetation. While the leasing of land for cultivation is rare, households sometimes purchase from each other the right to harvest areas under crops, notably when their gardens fail to produce enough food for some reason (Sillitoe 2003, 325–29); although more common, these transactions occur relatively infrequently too, and again, reimburse gardeners for their efforts in cultivating a crop and are not land use payments. When a household secures permission to cultivate on another’s land it assumes only temporary rights of cultivation, for the productive life of the garden. The Wola have no idea, as pointed out, of selling land and permanently alienating their rights to it; these remain in perpetuity with those who possess the kin-validated title and their descendants (at least until it passes from living memory, when it transfers again to the semg enk corporation). But there can be problems. The flexibility that they countenance, permitting families cultivation access to other land, can lead to disagreements over entitlements. The granting of cultivation rights to others can spawn disputes years later, if the descendants of those involved make conflicting claims to the land. The temporary gardener’s descendants, for example, may misinterpret his use of the land as evidence that rights reside with them, perhaps willfully if a choice location is involved. It is here that the “movement” of the otherwise permanent occurs, of title changes to inalienable land. The lack of any written register of land title and use reflects the absence of any authority to adjudicate, which is to be expected in a stateless context (cf. Brookfield 1973, 131, on the Simbu). People depend on their collective memory, notably that of older community members, corroborated where possible by the physical evidence of previous garden boundaries, to resolve conflicting claims, but such evidence is often ambiguous or absent—memories are fallible and individuals may disagree over events. The physical demarcation of areas is not straightforward, with boundaries indistinct and subject to negotiation, even disputation, following a period under fallow. The location of previ-

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To view this image, please refer to the print version of this book.

Figure 4.2. Cordyline shrubs mark an old fence line

ous gardens is judged by both natural features, such as trees, rocks, and streams, and human-made markers, notably old fence lines marked by silted-up ditches and rows of cordyline shrubs, pandanus trees, and other cultivated perennials (Brookfield and Brown 1963; Clarke 1971; Sillitoe 1996). These markers are generally better known to older persons, who may have witnessed the last cultivation of the site. They pass on this knowledge informally in the course of everyday interaction, informing younger relatives of areas farmed previously by their close kin, pointing out physical markers. Continuity of possession depends on such ongoing narration of local history (Gardner 1996). The centrality of oral history and the wrangling that its interpretation can lead to dawned on me after a blundering episode of the unaware-fieldworker sort—where we learn by making mistakes. Soon after our arrival in the Was Valley, my wife and I decided that it would be a good idea to have a small garden of our own. We naively thought that helping to clear and cultivate a garden was something that we could do while communication was limited and we knew little about local life. We assumed that we should learn something about gardening and that by “mucking in,” we’d get to know people better. After discussing the idea with some young men, we decided to clear an area adjacent to our house, which was previously the haus kiap (pidgin for “government officers’ house”), refurbished and extended, which the then colonial government required communities to maintain for the use of occasional visiting administrative patrols. Our actions sparked a land dispute, although we were ignorant of it. It simmered on while

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we blithely continued with our garden, until one day an irate man called Tensgay began to break down the fence that we had put up;12 as it comprised cane grass stems it was relatively easy to kick over.13 I was anxious and angry in equal measure. It transpired that he wished to establish his rights to the land, which a relative, Kem, had last cultivated on the understanding that his offspring would not inherit any prior entitlement (figure 4.4). We had approached Kem about clearing our small mixed-vegetable garden and he had happily given us permission—so far as the young men helping us were concerned, they recalled that Kem had a garden there when they were children. Tensgay was furious because we had apparently cut him out, as if he had no say over the land use. He was further concerned that if female relatives of Kem the “usurper” helped till and plant the garden, as was discussed, this would further undermine his descendants’ rights in the future, when people recalled that the “odd white couple” had their kitchen garden there. After further, sometimes worryingly acrimonious, debate, the angry Tensgay agreed to allow our garden to proceed if I made a public payment to him, so confirming that he was giving his permission and affirming his prior rights.14 It is in the resolution of disagreements over rights to land that we see Wola land tenure principles worked out, particularly with regard to their informal and fluid aspects (cf. Goldman 1983; Tiffany 1983; Hutchins 1990; Zorn 1992; Burt 1994; Kaitilla 1995 for comparative accounts from elsewhere in Melanesia). This accords with investigations of common property regimes generally (Ostrom 1990; Bromley 1992; Baland and Platteau 1996), which focus largely on how these manage resource use and make decisions, resolve problems between users, and cope with infringements of their collective rights, notably the punishment of rule breakers and free riders (that is, the selfish). The following cases illustrate the principles in action. They concern public contestation of social identity in relation to place. The first is typical of disputes that occur over rights to cultivate land. Forty years or so previously Mayka Haya and Huwlael Pel had combined forces to clear a garden together. Both men resided on the territory of the same semonda called Aenda, but were members of different semg enk, called Mayka and Huwlael (figure 4.3). The land they had cultivated together fell adjacent to the boundary between two tracts of territory, one claimed by Mayka and the other by Huwlael semg enk. They abandoned the area after cropping it for a few years, and a generation later Haya’s eldest son, Kot, cleared it again and established a garden. He abandoned the area in turn and several years later Pel, now an old man, started to cut down the secondary regrowth of Miscanthus sword grass that had colonized the site with a view to gardening it again. This sparked off a dispute over who had rights to the land. By this time Haya was dead, but his youngest son, Sal, argued that the land belonged to Mayka sem and that he and his three elder brothers had priority title to it. Pel argued that as it fell on the boundary between tracts claimed by the two sem, it was difficult to attribute the rights to either, and thus some compromise was necessary. But Sal and his other relatives were adamant that the entire area

LAND TENURE & COLLECTIVE-INTERESTS INDIVIDUAL To view this image, please refer to the print version of this book.

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Figure 4.3. Genealogy of disputants in case 1

was theirs, pointing to a silted-up ditch some yards away from the disputed area as marking an old boundary, which they maintained an ancestor of theirs had dug around a now-forgotten garden. They argued that Haya had extended only temporary rights of cultivation to Pel, and the fact that the latter had not demurred when Kot had gardened the whole area while his father was still alive was evidence that he knew this too. They consulted older persons over the disagreement, but it was inconclusive, because Pel himself was elderly and those who definitely knew what the previous tenure situation was had passed away. They discussed the matter, raking up what memories they had, and eventually the consensus of opinion was that it was Mayka land. There was the silted-up ditch, that ran in a straight line to join the known boundary between the two sem territories further down the mountain slope, which, taken together with the vigorous assertions of Haya’s sons, particularly those of Kot, that his father had told him when he had gardened there that Mayka had prior rights to all the land, persuaded the majority to back them. So Pel stopped clearing the area, and Sal, together with Duwaeb (his FFZSSSS), took over where he left off and established a joint garden there. The actions of Sal and Duwaeb in establishing a garden following the dispute are instructive of attitudes to land rights. By cultivating the area these two men were consoli-

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To view this image, please refer to the print version of this book.

Figure 4.4. Mayka Sal

dating the successful claim of their sem to it. Land tenure is open to constant negotiation and potential challenge. Title demands reaffirmation through use, and there is often the potential for new conflicting claims. Sometime in the future, for example, Kot’s, Sal’s, and Duwaeb’s children may argue over who has first claim to the land, although this is unlikely to prove serious, such disagreements usually being amenable to amicable resolution among such a small number of closely related semg enk residents. According to the principles of land tenure outlined previously, Kot’s and Sal’s children will inherit first rights to the area before Duwaeb’s offspring, who are collateral rather than direct descendants of Haya, the first remembered gardener. The significant issue for the Mayka men currently is that they have established, and by gardening have consolidated, their association with the disputed area. If they had allowed Pel to go ahead with his garden on a temporary tenure basis after they had established their prior rights to the land, they would have weakened their descendants’ position in any dispute a generation or so later, if one of Pel’s descendants attempted to clear the area. The issue behind many land disputes is a concern to validate rights publicly, not secure land for cultivation currently, indicating that it is not land scarcity that prompts them. In some cases, where the holder of the land rights successfully and unambigu-

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ously establishes his title, he may allow the trespasser to continue with his garden on the understanding that it is under temporary cultivation rights only. This was so in the following case. When Mayka Muwlib cleared cane grass from a slope that he thought his deceased father had gardened before him, Wenja Waenil disputed his rights, saying that the land belonged to Wenja semg enk, and to him and his siblings in particular because their father, Waebis, had gardened there previously. (Wenja and Mayka are again both constituent semg enk of the same semonda, Aenda—see figure 4.5.) Two other Mayka men, Pes and Sorliy, were simultaneously threatening encroachment on the area too, and it is probable that their gardening activities compounded Waenil’s worries. While Pes and Sorliy acknowledged temporary cultivation access only, their two gardens abutted the boundary between tracts of land claimed by Mayka and Wenja semg enk, and one of their gardens straddled it, with a silted-up ditch dug long ago by Waebis running through it. Understandably, Waenil feared tangled disputes over the area in the future, in which Wenja semg enk stood to lose some land. But even when challenged several times, Muwlib continued to clear his garden, and finally, to bring the matter to a head and affirm his transgressed land rights, Waenil started pulling up the fence stakes that Muwlib was driving in to enclose the area. This provoked a vociferous argument, and people gathered at the site, including some older persons—it is usual in disagreements over land rights for people to congregate on the disputed land. They all agreed without doubt that Waenil was right, some of them recalling Waebis’s garden there. Waenil then permitted Muwlib to garden the area under temporary cultivation rights, having established his prior claim to the land—on the understanding that the inheritable rights resided with his and his siblings’ children. Waenil’s behavior a few years after this dispute, while Muwlib was still cultivating the area, illustrates further the concern people have to maintain their established rights and those of their relatives. He cleared the cane grass from the slope on one side of Muwlib’s garden right up to his fence, giving the impression that he planned to cultivate it. But he hacked the vegetation down in a desultory way and others suspected that he never really intended to garden the area; although he burned it over once after cutting the cane grass to retard its regrowth, he never established a garden, the cane eventually growing back over the site. Everyone was aware of his actions, which clearly signaled his rights to the land, including Muwlib’s garden, and which others are unlikely to forget, even when he passes away. The Wola are aware that their compliant approach to land use can result in areas changing hands from the resident members of one semg enk to those of another. This movement of rights illustrates the transience and opacity of boundaries. It is not only allowing households temporary cultivation access that can lead to disputes and shifts of land boundaries between sem “families,” but also the bilateral features of the tenure regime. If a woman marries a man from a neighboring community, for example, and their children reside at his place but cultivate some land claimed by her forebears, and

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To view this image, please refer to the print version of this book.

Figure 4.5. Genealogy of disputants in case 2

their grandchildren and great-grandchildren in turn live at his place and cultivate the land, then the rights will pass after a few generations, when the original source of the title is forgotten, potentially to the pool of the father’s sem from the mother’s one, particularly if the land is near the boundary between their two territories. We can imagine how this process has contributed over time to the aforementioned patchwork quilt–like effect of sem landholdings dotted across the region. The Wola try to contain this land “movement,” as the following case illustrates. A generation or more after Maenget Kem had cleared a garden at Waishaenk, his eldest daughter’s husband, Huwlael Em, decided to cultivate the area again. But other Maenget sem men, particularly Maenget Tensgay, objected to this, on the grounds that it was improper because Em, as a resident member of the same semonda as them, had broken the exogamy rule normally observed within sem communities. (Maenget and Huwlael are again constituent semg enk of the same semonda, Aenda—see figure 4.8.) They could also see that the land in question, if gardened by Em, might pass into the hands of Huwlael semg enk through his descendants. But Kem sided with his son-in-law, with whom he resided, and Em and his wife continued to cultivate the area. The other Maenget men’s protests carried little weight, for according to the principles that govern land tenure, Em was within his rights cultivating where his wife’s father had gardened previously. The only, somewhat contentious option open to the Maenget men to prevent a possible shift of land rights was to garden the area again before any of Em’s descendants might cultivate

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it, which is what Tensgay did on another parcel of Maenget land that Em cleared and cultivated. He waited only five years or so from the time Em abandoned the garden, which was not sufficient fallow time for the area, before he recleared it for his adolescent daughter to cultivate. At the time, his actions gave rise to a dispute with Em because it was obvious that his motives were to reestablish the prior rights of his descendants and preempt Em’s offspring, but the issue was a tricky one given Em’s irregular marriage, which had long rankled with some his wife’s relatives. There was little that he could do, especially with only two young daughters whose spouses or children might try sometime in the distant future to claim cultivation rights to the land. These cases indicate the extent to which households vary in their construal of land tenure arrangements, giving ethnographic substance to the “variable individual” portrayed in the previous chapter. There is considerable scope for discrepancy between the principles and practice of landholding, the straightforward norms subject to interpretation and negotiation, as individuals-cum-moral-persons maneuver in the interests of their households. Sometimes the upshot of disputes is to affirm the movement of rights and the rearrangement of ill-defined semg enk boundaries, where land is in the process of shifting from one to another, as the following example illustrates. To view this image, please refer to the print To view this image, please refer to the print version of this book. version of this book.

Figure 4.6. Mayka Muwlib

Figure 4.7. Wenja Waenil

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To view this image, please refer to the print version of this book.

Figure 4.8. Genealogy of disputants in case 3

Last generation Mayka Haya cleared and gardened an area that his wife’s father had cultivated previously, situated on the territory of a neighboring community where his wife Morom had grown up. Later, one of Haya’s sons, Pes, cleared some of the area, and his mother’s elder sister’s son, Wol Saembuwt, cultivated the remainder, although his father had made no claim to the land by virtue of his marriage to the elder sister (figure 4.11). Any such claim would have been shaky because when Morom’s father cleared the area she tilled the soil as an adolescent, and not her then married sister who lived elsewhere, which strengthened Haya’s exclusive rights to use it. Pes had no objections to Saembuwt joining him but pointed out that he had temporary access only for that cultivation cycle, and the inheritable rights following abandonment would go to Pes’s descendants. It was clearly a case of shifting land rights. Neither man lived on their mothers’ territory, both lived in settlements neighboring it, geographically on opposite sides, so the area was convenient to them. It was an attractive site as it required no fencing, being within a large communally cultivated area enclosed by natural features with short lengths of fence erected by others to protect vulnerable points from pig egress. After some years, Saembuwt was still cultivating there and showed no signs of abandoning the garden. Eventually Pes became annoyed and when Saembuwt left the area fallow for a few months and it grassed over, he told him that he no longer agreed to him farming there. This angered Saembuwt, who had not abandoned the garden, and he started to pull up the grass in preparation to recultivating it. When Pes saw from the torn-up grass that Saembuwt intended to ignore him, he erected a showaip ownership sign on the spot.15 This forceful public denial of access sparked off

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Figure 4.9. Huwlael Em

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Figure 4.10. Maenget Tensgay

a dispute, at which people discussed the use of the land as far back as they could remember. The final consensus was that Pes was in the right. Saembuwt abandoned the area, and shrubby regrowth soon colonized it. Interestingly, during the dispute and afterward, Pes referred to the land as Mayka, whereas people recalled that it was his mother’s sem Kolomb land. It was public affirmation of its changing corporate group association.

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Figure 4.11. Genealogy of disputants in case 4

By the time my own gardening ventures became more ambitious, I was more aware of the issues surrounding land tenure and was even able to play some part in the negotiations. When I wanted to find a site, for example, to document in detail the clearing and cultivation of a garden (to include a time-and-motion study—see chapter 8), I visited several likely locales after explaining what I was looking for to those who had agreed to help me. Eventually we decided that a slope at a place called Ganonkiyba would be suitable. It was on the territory of Wenja semg enk (of Aenda semonda), but it turned out that Buwlaes of Ind semg enk (of neighboring Ebay semonda) had last cultivated there some twenty-five years previously, claiming access through his wife Oliyn, the daughter of a Wenja man called Waebis (figure 4.15). It transpired that two of those who had agreed to clear and cultivate the garden with me in return for a negotiated payment—Wenja Unguwdiyp, who was Oliyn’s half-brother, and his younger son, Neleb—were keen to use the site and regain undisputed Wenja control of it and so offered it to me for my garden project. They could foresee that there was a danger of a dispute in coming years, even the possibility of the land shifting from one sem to another if Oliyn’s sons or grandsons decided to garden there, as the Ganonkiyba locale is adjacent to both Aenda and Ebay territories. Seared by previous experiences, I wished to ensure that our tenure was secure in the eyes of all—the project that I planned was long term and I wished to avoid a land dispute disrupting it. So we consulted with some Ind men, who raised no objections, seeing the logic in confirming land rights unambiguously, with relatives receiving payment from the wealthy boliy (white man) to boot while doing so.

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Figure 4.12. Mayka Pes

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Figure 4.13. Wol Saembuwt

Figure 4.14. Garden area disputed by Pes and Saembuwt at the mokombai (regrowth) stage

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Figure 4.15. Land tenure relationships at Ganonkiyba site

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Figure 4.16. Wenja Oliyn

Figure 4.17. Wenja Unguwdiyp

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Figure 4.18. Wenja Neleb

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Figure 4.19. View of the Ganonkiyba garden during fencing

Some might wish to argue that the occurrence of disputes over land indicates that it is a scarce resource, people wrangling over access to it because it is in short supply. But only some 3 percent of gardens are subject to heated disagreements (table 4.3). The number of serious disputes, as opposed to earnest negotiations, over rights to land is relatively few, considering the broadness of the options facing households and the system’s dependence on oral tradition and people’s memories. Furthermore, the outcome of most disputes rebuts the idea that land scarcity is behind them because even when the majority opinion comes down against those intending to cultivate a site, few forgo the opportunity to continue doing so after publicly acknowledging that they have temporary noninheritable access only. In other words, they are rarely kicked off the land. In only one documented case did they have to stop, where the land tenure position was so difficult to ascertain that if those whose actions were challenged had continued to

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Table 4.3. Disputes over land rights

Survey sample No. gdns. 584

Area (m2) 548,956

Gardener’s rights disputed but affirmed and continues cultivation

Gardener in the wrong but continues cultivation as temporary tenant when others’ right established

No. gdns. % Area (m2) %

No. gdns. % Area (m2) %

14

2.4

15,582

2.8

2

0.3

3,240

0.6

cultivate the site, it would have compounded problems for subsequent generations. The usual outcome, where the custodians of land permit cultivation to continue after publicly validating their rights, correlates with the generally accommodating system of Wola land tenure, operating in a context where people do not think land is scarce. In practice the system places few restrictions on people, not featuring as prominently as might be assumed in the location and selection of swidden sites by tightly constraining access, a further indication that cultivable land is readily available in the region.

The Collective-Interests Individual The disputes over land not only concern people’s relations with one another but also with their sem landholding corporations. Access to arable land, featuring prominently in the constitution of sem “families,” affords an opportunity to look further into the status of corporate groups in the Was Valley touched on in previous chapters and to attempt to correct some misinterpretations of my views, such as voiced, for example, by Andrew Strathern (1992, 264) who maintains that I argue “that Wola society has to be analyzed in terms of networks only and not groups.”16 Or Valeri (1981, 828), who suggests that I think the Wola subscribe to no rules, referring to my “reduction of society to a conglomerate of individuals,” and going on to point out that “one must consider Wola society as a system of rules and values” which, according to him, is “precisely what Sillitoe does not do; his reference to rules and values is quite rhapsodic.” I find such criticism mystifying, as I document various socially instilled values and expectations that inform behavior. What are the principles that order landholding or exchange institutions (recorded in detail with wiring-like diagrams to show expected behavior— Sillitoe 1979b), if not normatively or “rule” governed? This discussion of the constitution of communities will hopefully dispel such misplaced censure, for example, that lack of descent-ordered idioms or political allegiance to corporate groups so defined implies absence of norms. It seems to originate from the erroneous assumption that I employ the term individual in the sociological sense of an

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Gardener in the wrong and stops cultivating area No. gdns. 1

% Area (m2) % 0.15

1,317

0.2

111

Total cases where gardeners’ rights to land disputed No. gdns. % Area (m2) % 17

2.9

20,139

3.7

asocial biological entity (Morris 1994, 15), whereas, as argued earlier, my acephalously autonomous, kin-embedded, reciprocally related idea of the individual is quite different. It is incorrect to suppose that my championing of the Melanesian individual implies that I think community groups have no place in Wola social life, as the foregoing discussion of the cooperative aspects of human behavior shows. Let me be quite clear: sem corporate groups undoubtedly feature in Wola social life, as I have always acknowledged (Sillitoe 1979b, 30–46). But my understanding of the nature of these groups is at odds with the conventional view that has corporatism overriding individualism, as intimated in the previous chapters in my challenges to the dominance of the “collective morality” interpretation of behavior and downplaying of the “self-interested individual.” Here I think that it is appropriate to introduce another aspect of Melanesian individuality, as I think evident in people’s behavior and comments, the “collective-interests individual.” The ethos of common property regimes generally relates to this collective-interests dimension of individuality (Ostrom 1990; Bardhan and Ray 2008). It is land, and households’ rights to it, which largely gives substance to Wola corporate groups; decisions about land use are crucial to their constitution. The rights that families act on at any time shape the configuration of local communities, deciding the actual composition of sem groups in any neighborhood. Those living on the same sem territory find themselves within a framework of kin-defined relations, which carry recognized obligations and responsibilities. The resulting communities determine the kin they interact with daily, families only acting on rights in one or two of the locales where they have rights. They do not individually invent these relationships; they are born into them, as stated previously, inheriting the associated values and normative expectations, albeit their behavior may contribute to their subsequent possible modification during their lives. These relationships both make them as persons and are made by them as individuals. How “variable individuals” manage these relationships, their interpretation of expectations and responsibilities, is not normatively constant. Some brothers, for example, are close and invariably support one another; others are hostile, such as the pair who came into violent dispute when one accused the other of committing adultery

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with his wife, the accused moving away for years to another community to avoid further conflict. While kin agree who is related to whom, and to what sem groups they may claim allegiance and hence access to land, it is in the actuation of particular rights that households declare contemporary sem group identity. What is the nature of these choices? Men express a preference for residing at their father’s place and for cultivating gardens there (Sillitoe 1979b), and are usually able to prevail upon their wives to respect their wishes in this matter, as described. But women, although often obliged to move in with their husbands’ kin, do not forgo their natal allegiances and their household, at some time during its history, may well move to reside with their kin. The land rights men act on largely give substance empirically to their voiced preference. They express patrifilial bias in their land title claims, territory anchoring groups that some may interpret as patrilineally defined. But these are not agnatic descent–informed decisions, albeit such idioms are detectable among the Wola if we consider land as a source of male images of continuity, and land tenure preferences may result in analogous genealogical apparitions (see Meggitt 1965; Panoff 1970; Tiffany 1983; Burt 1994 for other views).17 The debate over the nature of corporate groups in the New Guinea Highlands, notably their agnatic segmentary status and the extent to which they structure social interaction, has been long running and sometimes heated and contentious, as pointed out in chapter 2 (Pouwer 1960; Barnes 1962; Langness 1964; A. J. Strathern 1972; Sillitoe 1979b; Merlan and Rumsey 1991; A. J. Strathern and Stewart 2004, 25–52), and while some may think that it has burned itself out, many of its “moral group” assumptions continue to underpin resistance to giving a more prominent place to the individual in Highland political life.18 The descent theory suit has acquired many creases, to continue the allusion introduced previously, but sooner than attempt to iron these out, I suggest that the evidence does not fit it, with respect to ideology, recruitment, or composition, as seen in the bilateral undermining of the genealogical hierarchies that would structure descent paradigms. A review of land tenure data according to the kin or other title by which men claimed areas under cultivation qualifies the nature of the Wola paternal preference (see Brown, Brookfield, and Grau 1990 on other Central Highlanders). The largest number of gardens and area under cultivation is on the territory of semg enk, to which men’s first ascending generational connection is through their fathers (figure 4.20).19 The area they have claimed through their mothers is somewhat under one-third of the paternal area and that claimed through their wives one-sixth. The uninheritable areas, claimed through both distant consanguineal links and affinal ones, amount to somewhat under one-fourth. These data extend on, and qualify any assessment of patrilineality according to the residential choices of families, that is, whether located at a man’s father’s, mother’s, or some other relative’s place (Meggitt 1965; A. J. Strathern 1972, 66; Sillitoe 1979b, 41). They relate to the multiple decisions made regarding the several gardens cultivated by any family, as opposed to the siting of its one, or maybe two, homesteads.

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Figure 4.20. Schematic genealogy after gardeners’ land rights

While the location of gardens largely determines where people reside, because families wish to be conveniently near to at least some of them, they are likely to maintain some cultivations elsewhere too. The garden tenure data reveal the statistical bias introduced toward paternal connections in considering residence alone. A comparison of men’s residential choices with the rights acted upon to claim cultivable land reveals that whereas 2.3 men reside at their fathers’ place for every 1 man who resides elsewhere, they cultivate only 1.5 units of land claimed through their fathers for every 1 unit claimed through other relatives. While residing on their father’s territory, men may claim land elsewhere through other relatives, nearby or some distance away, and so have everyday interactions—as opposed to less frequent, often exchange-mediated ones—with those living and cultivating there, making them active members of these other sem communities too, in contrast to quiescent, potential land-claiming ones. The agnatic appearance of local land-using groups is qualified further if we investigate their composition through several generations, tracing genealogical connections back to semg enk apical ancestors believed to have claimed territories (figure 4.21).20 The pattern in ascending generations is a mirror image of current gardeners’ relations to the immediate relatives through whom they claim land access. There is no indication (either empirically or ideologically) that men have any preference, beyond their immediate paternal connection to the landholding group, for certain kin connections over others linking them to the apical ancestor; for example, men do not prefer FFMF to FMFF because the female relative is further off and more remote. The composition of the kin

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Figure 4.21. Schematic genealogy showing occurrence of males and females in land tenure kin equations

equations, beyond the first relation, is the result of forebears’ choices, now preserved as fossil relations on genealogies. It predictably further moderates the patrilineality of the territorial groups that result from this land tenure system when their composition is viewed across several generations. The sex of the relatives featuring in the various kin equations remains in about the same ratio in each ascending generation, their random occurrence resulting in a sort of multiplier effect giving a bilateral perspective to genealogies tracing semg enk composition. Another point promoting the descent-like appearance of local groups is that ideally people calculate land rights by direct ancestry; collaterality should not play a part, particularly in previous generations. The reason for downplaying collateral land claims is that they can foster disputes later. In principle, gardeners assume only temporary rights of cultivation through them, as related earlier. There are two ways that households may assume such temporary access that can lead later to particularly contentious confrontations over rights. In one, men may approach a distant consanguineal relative who

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is a member of another semg enk within a semonda to which they are related through a different constituent semg enk (a relationship that joins them in the distant past through a collateral connection). And in the other they may approach collateral relatives of affines for temporary use of their land. Although the land rights are not inheritable, the position can become fuzzy with time and lead to disputes, with the possible passing of the land title from one sem to another, as described, and associated boundary shifts. Nonetheless, men claim some land through collateral connections, which further promotes the bilateral aspect of sem groups, although the effect may be somewhat diminished (figure 4.22).21 The empirical nature of the paternal preference is again evident, previous gardeners often being fathers of current ones (although not only on paternal To view this image, please refer to the print version of this book.

Figure 4.22. Schematic genealogy showing occurrence of collateral connections in land tenure kin equations

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semg enk land, this category including land elsewhere claimed via other rights by men’s fathers). While other relatives feature significantly too, it is probable that the paternal category is somewhat inflated, unjustifiably increasing the agnatic aspect, because it is likely that where men were not sure who gardened areas before them, they stated that it was some paternal relative because this secured their land rights according to the expressed ideological preference, reducing the chances of disputes. The predominance of land claims through males, resulting from the patrifilial preference exercised in each generation, should not deceive us into seeing local communities, when viewed genealogically, as more agnatically bounded than they are in reality. It is striking that while people talk in terms of patrifilial ideology, the operation of the land tenure system allows for extensive bilaterality. And it facilitates the transfer of land, reflecting the dynamism of land rights. The blend of “bilaterality” with a detectable “agnatic bias” is intriguing and contributes to the indistinctness of corporate conceptions. It reflects the performative aspect detectable in Wola affiliative behavior, which produces alternately “bounded” and “unbounded” representations of their social corporations. When people dispute access to land, they are clarifying claimants’ sem identities, their rights to a particular area of land given their group allegiance or relation to the last gardener. The definition of these corporations, drawing boundaries around them according to those eligible to associate with them, is problematic, people potentially having affiliations to several. Their actual composition is subject to frequent change too, depending on households’ decisions about where to activate land rights. They have pervious boundaries. The conventions controlling land access give some structure to social life but allow much scope for individual maneuver. They combine an element of permanence with fluidity. “Bilateral” groups, by definition, are more open, “agnatic” ones more closed. In trying to capitalize on both tendencies, Wola behavior contributes further to their vague definition, which is not to deny their existence, nor seek to downplay the part they play in persons’ social lives, acting as individuals with collective interests.

Individual and Group Identity Land and access to it are important not only in a political-economic sense, as central to subsistence livelihood, but sentimentally too, as a facet of identity (see A. P. Cohen 1994 and Woodward 1997 on identity generally). The social relationships that are embedded in place are an aspect of self, the sense of belonging has a strong emotional aspect. This is another reason why men like to remain connected to, if they do not stay living all their lives at, the place where they grew up. It further endorses their paternal land preference, which springs both from the practical considerations of everyday life (men wishing to stay where they grew up because they are familiar with the land and intimately know the people there) and also associated strong emotive aspects. The identification of people with their land has profound psychological implications that go far

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beyond its place as a productive resource in their swidden cultivation regime (Lakau 1994a). In a sense they belong to the land, as much as it belongs to them. When two strangers meet, for example, they routinely ask each other, Njen suw al? (literally, Your land/soil where?): “Where is your place?” And people refer to the neighborhood where they live and have gardens as ninau suw (literally, my land/soil): “my place.” They have a strongly developed sense of relating to their place and to others who live there. The continuity that people feel binds them to their neighborhood. They have a deep affection for their land and talk with nostalgia and warmth about historical events that have occurred in the vicinity, such as battles, ceremonies, and so on, and they evince pride and satisfaction in cultivating land used by their forebears; their feelings are reminiscent of those of certain Englishmen who follow in their fathers’ footsteps and attend their old university or join their regiment (Sillitoe 1996). When they view a neighborhood they see a landscape of social relations connecting them to those who occupied the land in the past and those who are currently there. It symbolizes continuity and situates mortal humans in the cosmos, imbuing life with meaning and elevating it beyond a pig’s brief rooting on earth. All kin, including dead ancestors and unborn descendants, depend on and use the same land—forebears trod there, as will offspring, part of an everlasting chain rooted in that place like the crops cultivated there repeatedly. The link through the generations is also manifest in a strong spiritual connection with place. The Wola believe that when they die they become ancestral spirits, called towmow, which continue to frequent the territories where they lived. These ancestral connections give a further descent-like complexion to communities, as historically constituted points of continuity in people’s lives. A great deal of their ritual activity centered on appeasing these ever-present spirit forces, the land guardians of previous generations; although these practices were discontinued with the coming of Christianity, many people continue to believe that these spirits haunt their region. Land is a powerful symbol as well as a productive resource for these horticulturalists, which colors ideas about its availability and any sense of scarcity. The continuance theme has a further dimension, land not only giving the individual a sense of continuity and place, but also promoting the stable existence of local sem communities. The management of access to land resources gives kinship content beyond the sentimental. A considerable degree of informality and mobility characterizes Wola social life, as we have seen, and land acts anchor-like, giving a permanent reference point. Over about a decade, 36 percent of the seventy-six men comprising two semonda moved with their households between sem territories, two to three a year going to claim land elsewhere (see chapter 7 for further discussion of migration). Some of these kept houses and gardens on the two territories, the old and the new. Some did not move so far that they could not tend their previous gardens on a daily basis from their new homestead on a neighboring territory. Others moved entirely to a new location, abandoning previous gardens. The reasons for moves vary. Some families assert that they move for a change, and when questioned no other motive is apparent. Others move because of a dispute or

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some other problem; one man, for example, fearing sorcery or other retribution when a falling tree killed someone he was hunting with, moved his family away for its protection. Others move due to deteriorating relations with their neighboring kin, such as the man mentioned above accused of adultery; another moved his homestead when his relatives failed to present him with the wealth he thought he deserved following a bridewealth transaction. While some households have more gardens in more locations than others, no one has ever expressed a preference for having several rather than a few. A single large garden in one location is no more or less preferable than two or three smaller swiddens dotted about in different places. Social identity does not hinge on number or size of gardens. It is size of household and physical suitability of a location for cultivation that configure these issues (see next chapter). If asked why they farm the plots they do, people are likely to cite one or two such practical considerations (for example, aspect, ease of enclosure, convenience, terrain), in addition, possibly, to saying that it is their land, that they have kin-validated rights to use it. When asked, they make comments such as ninau suw (my land/place) or ninau ab bowisor (my father cultivated) and nat oberaeb henday (sun sees well) or barayda inj (not too steep) and haen baeray ngo (that rock face) or iyb solow bort (by river side) (the last two implying that the site is readily enclosed). The cultivation of any land belonging to a sem corporation affirms one’s association; claiming sites in some locales in the territory above others is not a stronger assertion of identity. The sem-founded communities that occupy the Was Valley depend on their association with particular territories for their enduring existence. Although social relationships within them are shifting and changing, and over time actors change with births and deaths, the land serves as an enduring connection. The land tenure system affords continuity without rigidity, which would conflict with the free flow the Wola expect in everyday social life. While it nominally controls rights of access, it does not overly restrict families’ choices. Although they carefully guard their rights to land, people are often willing, as noted, to allow others to cultivate it temporarily. A considerable proportion of gardens are farmed under such arrangements; something like 16 percent of the total cultivated area surveyed was on land to which gardeners had only temporary cultivation access. This reflects the degree of flexibility that the system affords. If a family wishes to cultivate an area for some reason but has no rights there, it will probably be able, as described, to secure temporary access from relatives. Even if it cannot gain such access, the broad land tenure rules ensure that it will find a suitable location elsewhere, with cultivable land in adequate supply. The wide access to land means that other factors feature prominently in families’ choice of garden sites, such as topography and distance from homestead, as mentioned, the land tenure system laying down only broad rules to guide behavior. No persons have said that by claiming usufruct they are asserting their identity, making some subjective expression about space or underwriting community structure

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(Kirby 1996; Woodward 1997). They are expressing identity and kin-group allegiance in their claims to land rights and use. This is how they “say” it. The nearest they come to verbalizing their awareness of a connection between identity-allegiance and landclaims is in comments about using their fathers’ and forefathers’ land and their incapability of alienating their rights to it. Further, there is no evidence that some persons are more concerned about their kin identity than others, expressing in their divergent land claims some confusion about which sem communities to show allegiance. There is no detectable difference regarding the frequency with which households make land claims and any possible sense of insecurity about identity and allegiance relative to others (for example, households cultivating wives’ or distant kinsmen’s land). All households have access to the land they require to meet their subsistence needs, and land claimed— according to number of gardens and areas cultivated—relates to family size and pigs herded, not any perceived identity differences. No status accrues to cultivating larger areas per se, although bigger households that need larger gardens to subsist are likely to herd more pigs, which might signal differences in sociopolitical exchange standing.

Politics of Tenure The families of men who differ in social standing likewise evidence little difference in the rights they use to claim access to cultivable land. The Wola recognize, as described earlier, certain men—the ol howma (men of the clearing)—above others for excelling in sociopolitical exchange. A comparison of the rights by which men claimed areas under cultivation with their social status reveals no apparent trend for the more successful to prefer any particular rights over other men; any variations are apparently random (figure 4.23).22 If we discount the outliers, men of undisputed ol howma status (row 1) cultivate about average on their father’s and affines’ land, lower than average on mother’s and distant consanguines’ land, and above average on their wife’s land. These differences seem to be arbitrary. This accords with people’s assertions that men do not aspire to use certain rights above others, manipulating any influence derived from differences in social standing to secure certain land. They all behave the same in this respect, regardless of status. The absence of any correlation between social status and land tenure further tempers any assumed agnatic or political standing for the land-custodian corporations of the Was Valley. If there was something to be gained, particularly regarding political influence, from exercising certain defined rights to land, such as paternal ones, above others, we might expect the socially successful and ambitious to attempt to claim land through these connections more often than others. While they, like everyone else, express a paternal preference in claiming land, there is no evidence that ol howma favor agnatic claims more often. It is difficult to see what benefits it would bring them if they did, for there is no apparent political advantage to be gained from laying claim to paternal land in preference to any other. It underscores the point that local communities are not

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Figure 4.23. Land tenure compared with social status

According to garden frequency counts (and pooling adjacent groups—i.e., 1 & 2, 3 & 4, etc.—because of small counts), land tenure and status are not independent at the 1% significance level, χ2 = 74.9 df = 16, p = 1.37×10−9. According to area of gardens, fitting a linear model with square root of area as response and applying ANOVA, shows that status is significant in predicting area of a garden across all classes (by status F = 15.5, df = 1, p = 9.2 × 10−5 and by tenure F = 3.5, df = 4, p = 0.0082).

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political corporations, descent-defined or otherwise. Furthermore, there is no indication that ol howma have either more pure agnatic connections to the apical ancestors of the sem on territories where they claim land (that is, fewer females in their pedigrees) or that the previous gardeners of sites they cultivate are more often paternal relatives. This accords with other evidence that agnatic relations play no part in the attainment of ol howma status (Sillitoe 1979b). Politically more salient than the doings of erstwhile leaders is the problem encountered with boundaries, alluded to several times in this account of land tenure, and a recurring theme in this book (chapters 3 and 6). It was some time before I started to comprehend Wola attitudes to boundaries, cleaving overlong to my English idea of borders as mappable lines. Various episodes contributed to it slowly dawning on me that I was approaching the issue the wrong way, including several frustrating attempts to map the boundaries of sem territories, which I had down on my list of fieldwork “things to do” (chapter 6). It illustrates how we acquire some knowledge without realizing it at the time, for reflecting back now I see that I was unaware of it.23 The mapping of sem boundaries was a frustrating business because those I asked to help me could not agree about them. I only made matters worse, I now realize, by becoming short tempered and insisting on some resolution, for predictably this served to inflame arguments. Nonetheless, I tried several times to draw such a map before giving up.24 I now appreciate that I was asking them to do something that they do not undertake for large tracts of land, only sorting out boundary matters for small parcels when it becomes an issue, notably when clearing a garden. The problems encountered at this level, as disputes testify, indicate why anything more is unrealistic. The consequent attitude to boundaries accounts for the fraught nature of negotiations with mining companies elsewhere over land rights and royalties that demand the demarcation of large land areas. The flexibility of the principles that underwrite cultivation rights makes disagreement over priority access to land inevitable sometimes. A certain amount of disputation is integral to the system’s operation, publicly resolving differences and reaffirming the legitimacy of kin corporation guardianship. There is a performance aspect to these disputes, which turns on boundary interpretation, land disputes often featuring rival accounts of boundaries. Each party has a recollection that disagrees with the other. These disagreements reflect blurred definition. The actors aim to assert their view and in so doing establish boundaries and land rights that suit them. In the dispute they confront and seek to overcome the “fuzziness” for the time being, although it is likely to come up again later, for as the neighboring Huli aptly express it, such “talk never dies” (Goldman 1983). In their behavior they help in a structural sense to beat or obviate boundaries, with significant political implications, these issues relating to power and property relations, social identity and continuity, and sentimental matters regarding land custodianship. The ill-defined nature of boundaries is an integral aspect, maybe even an inevitable outcome, of the containment in a stateless context of possible power plays that could extend to control over access to productive resources, a possibility

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apparent incipiently in disputes over land access. It is the acephalous system in action, which returns us to the issue of egalitarian politics. The political imperative behind the fuzzy-bounded nature of local communities (Barth 2000) throws further light on the character of groups and why the stateless polity downplays their presence. Acephalous political forces compromise their existence such that they cannot become the sort of incorporated entities that some persons could try to control and lead, threatening to curtail individual autonomy. They are consequently difficult to pin down, and I sense myself short of words to account for them credibly. To talk about moving the unmovable, for instance, has the ring of the ridiculous, yet that is the impression. Households not only move physically from one garden site to another on occasion, as they practice to varying extents shifting cultivation (Sillitoe 1996), but they also acknowledge, as we have seen, a disconcerting transient attitude to land access. While land is inalienable, rights and use have shifting aspects that relate to such unfamiliar ideas as collectively indefinite boundary and identity (Palsson 1993; Barth 2000). The transfer of land between territorially defined groups with kin corporation custodianship changing over time is an aspect of their equivocal identity. The tenure system contrives an aspect of motion that reflects something of the fluidity of social life and the mutability of the corporations that to some extent inform social relations, which relate, I think, to the issue of individual sovereignty. It is difficult for state citizens to comprehend how people entertain such laissez-faire attitudes to boundaries and contrive to order life with their consequent hazily defined sociopolitical categories. We face similar difficulties regarding linguistic and cultural traits, deciding where one culture or society ends and another starts, as discussed in chapter 3 (A. J. Strathern and Stürzenhofecker 1994; Biersack 1995; Miedema 1996). Land tenure rights concern these issues at the level of individuals, their households, and small kin-defined landholding corporations, addressing the problem of confirming boundaries around their territories. It is inappropriate to think in terms of firm categories, as we habitually do in our intellectual manipulations, where people’s behavior admits more flexible conceptions. It illustrates the difficulties we encounter when we try to categorize Melanesian life according to our canons: instead of making things clearer they become murkier (Hays 1993). We can expect conundrums when we try to conceive of some aspects of their existence, such as what comprises what we think of as the economy. In some senses we have to cultivate different conceptions, think more open-endedly. It makes the task of interpreting such cultures using concepts familiar to us tendentious, for we customarily draw lines around things, such as those we associate with the economy. It obliges us to take a broad or holistic approach, which we identified in chapter 1 is critical to appreciating other such “economies,” setting them in wide cultural context. These observations, interestingly, chime in with the current idea that social life is a process that we can never resolve in a final structure. In the Was Valley, land mediates between the contradictory demands for both structure and process in a fissiparous stateless context. These observations accord too with the con-

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temporary crisis in representation that all knowledge is contested.25 Here we encounter again the variable individual contributing to shifts in the “collective conscience.” Why this opacity, and what are the political-economic implications? Any boundary implies the existence of a center, and away from this, toward the edges, a fringe; for as Fernandez (2000, 117) observes, “Where there are boundaries there are centers and peripheries.” The center is pivotal to the periphery in any bounded entity. It is potentially a structure of domination. Those on the periphery are, by definition, more marginal than those occupying the center, which can translate into asymmetrical power relations. Or alternatively, boundaries may serve, as in identity politics, to mark off those who are in, recognized as members, from those who are out, labeled as foreigners (Lamont and Fournier 1992). An egalitarian order has to contain any such expressions of potential power (Gardner 1996), whether promoted through the existence of bounded social groups or exclusive conceptual categories (Miedema 1994). It is axiomatic in acephalous contexts, where equality and individual autonomy are esteemed, to diminish potentially dominant relations by blurring and reducing exclusive boundaries. The urge is toward uncut networks and limitless interaction, which diffuses rather than concentrates economic and political power. This relates again to the issue of descent-ordered relations, which imply structured genealogical hierarchy. They demand the arrangement of defined categories, featuring delineated boundaries, built up block-like into a pyramid structure. But hierarchical relations are antithetical to stateless egalitarian orders, and vague and fuzzy boundaries subvert them.26 The cultural instincts of the Wola prompt them to dispute and dissemble borders. While the ethos is to evade any firm boundary, looked at behaviorally from the actors’ perspective, the aim is sometimes to make boundaries and at other times to unmake them, as contested over time and determined by the cultural “moment” in play. It is in such contexts that the blurring of title rights and physical boundaries occurs, as different sets of kin claim rights over land. It is not by establishing boundaries as such that persons assert identity but by the use of land attributed to kindreds, featuring indefinite borders over time and shifting corporation title. It is now widely agreed that sociopolitical exchange rather than segmentary descent is the key to understanding the constitution of New Guinea Highland society, although as pointed out, those wedded to the sociological “moral collective” approach continue to argue that descent-constituted “clan” groups feature in the ordering of transactions, where I argue for the coming together of “variable individuals” associated with kinfounded territorial entities linked together through ramifying social networks. It is network integrity that is significant, not group solidarity. Downplaying the existence of boundaries is again evident, as it concerns the direction of, and responsibility for, wealth transactions on prescribed social occasions. The networks of relatives around which wealth (such as pearl shells previously) circulates are open-ended and endless, and the things flowing around them have no source, direction, or destination, no owner or necessarily final user (Sillitoe 1979b, 1988; Lederman 1986b). These valuable objects, which

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we expect to fall into our economic domain, feature centrally in the coming investigation of the Was Valley economy. These transactional arrangements subvert the inevitable centrality involved with bounded entities that may intimate power relations, constrain such potential relations so that they are beyond the reach of interest groups or dominant individuals in this stateless context. Furthermore, in these kin-structured exchange contexts personal identity is currently created and status contemporaneously validated, whereas issues pertaining to land rights root social life in the past and give it continuity. The transfer of land that these tenure arrangements allow between sem corporations is potentially subversive, even though the resulting ill-defined boundaries are integral to the polity. The movement of land paradoxically both strikes at people’s sense of security and underpins it, both menacing and sustaining identity. The composition of sem groups is constantly changing, and parcels of land are subject to movement, which is one of a piece with people having no idea of belonging to a wider sociocultural entity. It puts in context people’s jealous guarding of their individual prior rights to land and their challenges to any encroachments on their communal semg enk territories, even when they have no plans to use areas. It is understandable that the shifting of land rights from one sem to another is perplexing, even disturbs people, and that they dispute any encroachments on their rights. They cautiously watch in particular those granted access for a period of temporary cultivation, to see that they and their offspring remain aware that the inheritable rights remain with the acknowledged prior usufruct owners and their descendants. In ostensibly looking after their descendants’ interests they are arguably protecting their own sense of security in a changeable world. The tension between the “self-interested individual” and the “collective-interests individual” is evident here, and opting to maximize personal political autonomy results, as the tenure system illustrates, in groups that seem enigmatic to us. But even if difficult to portray and envisage—self-interest and collective interest being confusingly contradictory representations—they exist nonetheless and are central to social life. The transfer of inalienable land, an apparent contradiction in terms, catches well the puzzling character of groups in the Was Valley, contravening the integrity of custodian corporations that give some enduring kin-founded order to social life (by relating land users to one another and holding pools of unused land in common). In some senses these inexactly bounded territorial entities give some form to social life (Holl and Levy 1993), which otherwise appears amorphous and unrestricted. The obfuscation relates intimately to the diffusion of power and consequent informality that characterizes the Wola political economy. The Melanesian expression of self-interest, closely tied to kindefined territorial interests and identity, is patently different from capitalist arrangements with respect to land, which treat it as a disposable productive asset. Land situates humans in the world and symbolizes continuity: for the Wola it is not only a factor of production. It is difficult for us to appreciate the attachment the Wola feel to their land. In England, for example, few families, other than a handful of aristocratic ones (with stately homes and estates inherited down the generations), closely identify continuously

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with an area of land. We even contrive the antithesis, with hundreds of families living on the same hectare of land stacked in high-rise housing one above the other. The disputes that occur over land rights are integral to the system and have nothing to do with land shortage (chapter 6). When a dispute over land leads to violence, men take up arms to defend encroachments on their rights and not because of land shortage, and if fatalities occur and saend (hostilities) break out, people fight not over access to land as a productive resource but to meet revenge obligations incurred in defending more profound rights relating to their freedom. While the land tenure system can apparently accommodate to any current demographic expansion (chapter 7), it is conceivable that people’s jealous guarding of their territorial rights may stem in some measure from deep-seated fears about land shortages in the future. But this is not evident. The rules of land tenure and their open-ended interpretation suggest otherwise in the Was Valley. They indicate a population for which scarcity is not an issue with respect to land.

CHAPTER 5

Selection of Cultivation Sites and Individual Choice

I

t is possible that factors other than tenure constrain access to cultivable land, making it scarce. In addition to access rights, several other criteria influence gardeners’ choice of sites. Even if tenure arrangements suggest the Wola perceive there is sufficient land to meet their needs, sites vary physically—from well-drained slopes to poorly drained hollows, from steep inclines to gentle rises, some under montane forest and others grassy vegetation, and so on—which requires them to make choices. Choice is an inevitable consequence of formal economic assumptions, suggesting that the formal model should have some relevance, although the marked contrast between Wola attitudes to land and those of capitalism, as evidenced in the previous chapter, suggest caution. Similar to swidden farmers elsewhere, who periodically move gardens from one location to another (Conklin 1961, 313; Ellen 1982, 46–47), several factors influence Was Valley households when choosing new sites to clear and cultivate, among them distance from homestead, ease of enclosure, topography of locale (aspect, slope, terrain, and altitude), natural vegetation, and various social considerations.1 In assessing the relative significance of these various factors in reaching decisions about swidden location, this chapter explores the possibility that these define scarcity— the circumstance that obliges individuals to choose at all—in addition to looking at the character of individual decision making when faced with choices. Farmers seem to consider all factors more or less simultaneously when judging sites for new gardens. While the question of rights of access to cultivable land feature in deciding where to establish a garden, the flexibility of Wola tenure arrangements indicates that these do not necessarily have primacy over physical considerations relating to a site’s suitability for cultivation. Although in some senses, whether one has rights to cultivate at a location

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or not will be a prior consideration, these rights are relative and as the previous chapter shows may be subject to some negotiation, which diminishes their precedence.

Tacit Knowledge The assessment of the factors discussed here involves a degree of tacit knowledge. Scrutiny of how these factors inform decisions about garden location affords an opportunity to investigate the use of such knowledge, a topic mentioned in the first chapter as relevant to understanding “economic” decision making and agricultural practices. The boundary issues discussed in the previous chapter also illustrate tacit knowledge in operation, people not deliberating over the political implications of these but proceeding with their lives, as in much social behavior that is not apparently subject to critical interpretation by actors. The prominence of tacit understanding in decision making qualifies the economists’ assumption that the so-called rational-actor model adequately describes the choice-making process. When faced with decisions about swidden location, for example, people proceed in a practical fashion and see how they fare, rather than intentionally deliberating over the choices that face them. While this does not necessarily invalidate economic assumptions, it makes the assessment of their relevance in other cultural contexts considerably trickier. The epistemological implications are intriguing for academic research when decisions involve knowledge as practice, not discourse, challenging the status of the written record. If asked “Why have you cultivated a garden here?” a Wola farmer is likely to respond with an uncomprehending look and a comment, perhaps, to the effect that it is a good place. If quizzed further about why it is a good place, he may mention some of the issues discussed here, commenting on aspect, distance to homestead, or whatever, but he is unlikely to have previously weighed these up in a deliberative manner, proceeding instead to establish the swidden as intuition dictated. These cultivators are not familiar with verbally rationalizing their decisions, instead acting practically in response to various situational factors encountered during everyday life. It is pertinent, as pointed out, that no single factor may be dominant in decision making, farmers assessing all of them more or less simultaneously in the gardening act. None necessarily take precedence over others, although sometimes one weighs more heavily on some occasions. When a gardener selects a garden site it is somewhat like a performance, unique to that place and time (Richards 1993). “Ethnographic-determinism” seeks to advance ways of more precisely documenting and understanding such performances to combat the danger of misplaced abstraction, originating in the ethnocentric Western dichotomy between skill and intellect as distinct aspects of knowledge (Sillitoe 1996; Marglin 1996).2 We run again into the limitations of anthropological method. While Wola gardeners can discuss some of the issues that inform site choice, they cannot account for how they balance between the various factors informing any decision because they do not con-

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sciously think about them in this way—they just juggle them in the doing and reach a decision. In this event, if they know by doing, how can we learn to know too? The methodological challenges are considerable. In Malinowski’s (1922, 4) much-quoted poetic vein of “imagining yourself on a tropical beach,” we have to imagine ourselves walking barefoot everyday across a sem territory for several years—along steep slippery clay paths, through thick leaf-mold-floored forest, splashing across swampy clearings, pushing through razor-sharp sword grass—and so getting to “know” the terrain intimately. The barefootedness is necessary because the tactile encounter with the earth informs knowing, although it can be dangerous, with nasty injuries common (even with feet that have developed pachyderm-like thick soles) and also risks disease (such as hookworm).3 We also need to build up a fund of site knowledge by engaging in clearing, enclosing, and cultivating gardens at various locales. All fine as an imaginary exercise—otherwise impractical, to say the least. And even if we could achieve such skilled knowing, could we communicate it to others in words, or would it be like many other skills, such as riding a bicycle, which we can only appreciate in the doing? It seems that we have no option but to resort to the sort of artificial analysis of factors attempted here, which cannot pretend to capture other than a shadow of the tacit native view. A performance-attuned understanding of decision making in respect of swidden location not only provides a standpoint, little explored in itself, from which to query capitalist economic assumptions about production and choice in the Highlands of New Guinea, it also affords an opportunity to assess the variation that characterizes individual behavior, as discussed in chapter 2. We can follow the extent of variation in respect of individual choices, garden locations differing appreciably. The factors that influence the siting of gardens—distance, slope, vegetation, and so on—cover a number of options that, taken together, offer a wide range of possible choices. The variable individual issue returns us also to the question of differences in social status that threaten to undermine equality. This relates to the “leadership” of the “clans” that the sociological “moral collective” approach proposes is central to ordering Highlander social life, involving so-called big men with whom the “Melanesian individual” perspective takes issue. Garden site choice throws additional light on how an egalitarian order compromises any idea of leadership. If some sites are superior to others, their use might be expected to correlate somewhat with social status. Testing the hypothesis that those of higher standing have better access to such locales illustrates the powerless content of status in this stateless context.

Distance to Gardens The distance from a garden site to the cultivating family’s homestead informs choice of location. It is particularly significant beyond a certain point, where individuals judge it too far to manage a return journey comfortably after undertaking a day’s tasks. There are three related questions: first, at what distance do they think that

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a site is too far away; second, having established this, is there any pressure on the land within this compass suggesting scarcity, notably that nearer to homesteads; and third, is there any evidence that gardens tend to cluster somewhere within the range people consider tolerable for siting gardens, and that they decrease toward its outer limits? The landholdings of the semg enk that structure cultivable land tenure (chapter 4) are spread out discontinuously over the territories of the semonda they comprise, which obliges households to consider several different locales if they wish to exercise a wide range of choice. Those with rights on the territories of neighboring communities may extend their search there too. The gardens of families consequently are routinely distributed over wide areas. It is not that there is no suitable cultivable land left in the vicinity of homesteads, forcing families to establish new gardens some distance from established ones; a glance across neighborhoods reveals sizeable areas of uncleared farmable land (see map 6.2 in chapter 6 and associated DVD detailing gardens and homesteads of two neighboring semonda communities). The data indicate that the effective range from house to gardens is one hour’s walk (figure 5.1).4 While there are a few gardens located beyond this distance, the evidence suggests that they are outside the range generally considered convenient; a round trip of more than two hours on top of attending to garden tasks represents a burdensome expenditure of effort.5 This comfortable distance is similar to that reported for the Enga (Waddell 1972, 42–57), the Kapauku (Pospisil 1963a, 87), the Simbu (Brookfield 1973, 130), and the Maring (Clarke 1971, 166–67) as well as regions elsewhere in the world (Ellen 1978; Dove 1985; Freeman 1970; Carlstein 1982). The number of gardens and area under cultivation steadily decline with distance from homesteads. There are three broad categories: the largest number of gardens occurs within fifteen minutes of cultivating families’ houses; the numbers of gardens then remain relatively constant (with a gradual decline apparent with distance) up to one hour’s walk away; beyond this there is a marked fall in garden numbers, as the distance exceeds that generally thought manageable. In a sophisticated analysis of changes in garden and house locations over a decade among the Simbu, Brookfield (1973) determined that distance from homestead was the principal variable determining location of gardens; when it exceeded 1,400 meters a move was probable. “In Chimbu, as in many other societies, there is a strong suggestion of a ‘tolerable distance’ limit somewhere within this range, and beyond which the separation of everyday activities becomes onerous and unusual” (150). The long-term cycle that he detects, where houses and associated gardens oscillate around a central point in the clan territory, influenced by the pig population cycle, and more recently the planting of perennial coffee bushes, may have some relevance for the Wola, although coffee is an insignificant cash crop, and changes in pig populations between large pig-kill festivals (while demanding increased labor as events near, especially for women—Sillitoe 2003, 281–93) are less noticeable in their impacts on their cultivations because their gardens are more dispersed. The distance from other gardens already under cultivation is not

Analysis of variance (ANOVA—taking square root of area to normalize data and fitting as ordered factors) shows that gardens within 1 minute of homesteads are very significantly smaller in size at p = 45): X2 = 54.2, df = 36, p = 0.026. The ordinal nature of the variables further invites a linear trend analysis, which supports the chi-square test of independence: M2 = 1.61, p = 0.20. Applying ANOVA suggests that status but not distance is significant in predicting the size of a garden (by status F = 15.17, df = 1, p = 0.00011 and by distance F = 6.59, df = 1, p = 0.010).

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Figure 5.3. Distance to gardens compared with age

A chi-square test suggests that age and distance are not independent at 1% significance level (distances pooled as above): X 2 = 73.4, df = 36, p = 0.00023. The ordered variables again invite a linear trend analysis, which further supports an association between age and distance, with test statistic M2 = 10.7, p = 0.0011. Applying ANOVA suggests that both age and distance are significant in predicting the size of a garden (by age F = 9.44, df = 1, p = 0.0022 and by distance F = 7.91, df = 1, p = 0.0051).

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these more convenient sites at death and their descendants move in. But this is only a tendency; some older men, for example, have young wives, for whom distance is not such an issue.

Enclosure The ease with which an area can be made secure is possibly more of a consideration than distance from homesteads to swiddens. All gardens in the Was Valley are enclosed to stop pigs from entering, as elsewhere in the Highlands (for example, the Simbu—Brookfield and Brown 1963). The predations of these animals, breaking into and rooting over cultivations, are a major cause of disputes (Sillitoe 1981), as in other regions too—Brookfield (1973, 130), for instance, comments that “the Papuan pig has a well-developed directional sense, and its predations are commonly held to be malicious rather than random.” The securing of a garden against pig depredations can involve much hard work, and men try to reduce this wherever possible. One way they seek to do this is to use natural barriers, exploiting features such as steep rock faces (haen baeray), gullies (iyb gan),9 and rivers (iyb), which serve as effective obstacles to the movement of pigs. The geology of the Wola region lends itself to the exploitation of natural barriers, being limestone karst country with sinkholes, cliffs, collapsed dolines, and broken rock rubble (Sillitoe 1996). The Etoro of the Papuan Plateau to the southwest, who occupy similar topography, likewise make use of such barriers wherever possible to protect cultivations (Kelly 1977, 53–55). The extent to which the Wola use natural features to enclose their gardens is considerable (table 5.2), suggesting that locations with these attract farmers looking for sites. By securing many cultivations in this way, they reduce considerably the fencing and ditching they would otherwise have to undertake, decreasing labor demands noticeably (chapter 8). This is particularly so for gardens within areas of extensive cane grassland some distance from forest, where access to timber for fencing can be a problem. This is similarly the case on the nearby Nembi Plateau to the southeast, where men talk about carrying fencing materials long distances as onerous work (Allen et al. 1980, 131). Sometimes natural barriers protect or partially enclose large areas and many gardens may be situated here, whereas cultivations enclosed entirely by man-made barriers usually occur singly, with more than three rarely within the same fence or ditch. (The chi-square test residuals confirm significantly more naturally enclosed gardens than expected shared by several people, and more than expected single gardens fenced.) The category called “no enclosure” in table 5.2, encompassing “several gardens,” sometimes features a little fencing in vulnerable places. All those with gardens in such areas communally maintain such short lengths of fencing, although those with gardens nearest to these vulnerable spots more often repair them because they pass by more regularly; furthermore, if the fencing becomes weak and pigs break in, their gardens are most likely to suffer damage, being nearest the point of entry. Some of the gardens

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Figure 5.4. Fence with beading attached, dense cane grassland behind

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Figure 5.5. Enclosure with natural features, a rock overhang that also serves as a shelter and cooking place (note sooty stain above oven pit)

in the “partially enclosed” category, which might include those of several households, may also serve to block off larger areas beyond, where further communal gardens occur that have “no enclosure”—they act as barriers securing vulnerable places in locales otherwise protected by natural features (the garden owners directly sharing the fence and/or ditch are largely responsible for building and maintaining it, even though it serves to protect several other gardens).

Table 5.2. Numbers of gardens and areas enclosed, partially enclosed, and not enclosed by human-made barriers

Fence

Enclosed Fence & ditch

3 sides closed

Partially enclosed

2 sides closed

1 side closed

No enclosure

Natural barriers

Single gardens

Shared gardens (3 men)

Notes: Applying a chi-square test shows that type of enclosure and number of people who share gardens are not independent at 1% significance level: χ2 = 350.4, df = 10, p < 2.2 × 10−16. Applying ANOVA (with square root of area as a response) shows that type of enclosure is significant at the 1% level in predicting area of gardens, but the number of people who share the garden is not (by enclosure F = 20.2, df = 2, p = 3.5 × 10−9 and by sharing F = 1.9, df = 1, p = 0.2).

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Table 5.3. Estimated garden perimeters enclosed in different ways Fence

Fence & ditch

Ditch

Natural barrier

Enclosed by human-made barriers: 10,250 m 1,150 m 3,750 ma 120 ma Partially enclosed by human-made barriers: 3,850 m 6,600 m 1,850 ma Naturally enclosed: 32,700 m Totals: 14,000 m a

1,270 m

5,700 m

39,300 m

Work shared with others whose gardens are also enclosed.

The areas under cultivation do not necessarily cover the total area enclosed by fence, ditch, or natural features. It often happens that more land is enclosed than cultivated; particularly where natural features occur, only part of such large areas may be under cultivation. It is consequently difficult to judge the extent to which natural features enclose gardens compared to fences and ditches. The irregular shape of garden perimeters compounds the problem. A gross comparison is possible using the average area of gardens in each “enclosure type” category.10 This rough-and-ready calculation indicates that for every length of fence and ditch constructed, natural barriers cover twice the distance (table 5.3). The comparative advantage of natural features increases considerably, taking into account that they sometimes enclose substantially larger areas than those under cultivation. The gardens enclosed entirely by fence and ditch are also, on average, smaller in area than others. This reflects both the work involved, large lengths of barricade being difficult to construct and maintain, and the tendency for men to enclose mixed-vegetable and taro gardens more frequently, which are smaller in area than sweet potato cultivations, where they more often rely on natural barriers (table 5.4).11 It is not only because they are smaller in area and so less formidable to enclose that a larger proportion of taro and mixed-vegetable gardens are enclosed by fence and ditch but also because of the locations where they largely occur. (The chi-square residuals confirm that significantly more than expected mixed-vegetable and taro gardens are enclosed by man-made barriers.) The wet conditions that favor taro occur at relatively few locations on any sem territory, restricting gardeners to such places, few of which fall conveniently behind natural features. More often than not men are obliged to erect

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Table 5.4. Enclosure according to different types of gardens Enclosed by humanmade barriers No. gdns. % 28

Area (m²)

%

17.3 13,117 10.7

Partially enclosed by human-made barriers No. gdns. %

Area (m²)

%

Naturally enclosed No. gdns. %

Taro gardens (ma em) 5 6.2 3,679 3.1

Mixed-vegetable gardens (em g emb) 3,455 2.8 2 2.5 690 0.6 3,044 2.5

18 38 a

11.1 23.5

78

48.1 102,610 84

Area (m²)

%

6

2.3

627 1.5

2

0.8

627 0.2

Sweet potato gardens (hokay em) 74 91.3 114,538 96.3 248 96.9 256,979 98.3

Notes: A chi-square test (omitting gardens within houseyards) shows that type of enclosure and crop type are not independent at the 1% level of significance: χ2 = 104.4 df = 4, p < 2.2 × 10−16. An ANOVA test indicates that both crop type and enclosure (particularly crop) are significant in predicting garden size (by crop type F = 105.7, df = 2, p < 2 .2 × 10−16 and by enclosure F = 18.2, df = 2, p = 2.3 × 10−8). a These mixed-vegetable gardens enclosed by human-made barriers are not included in previous tables because they are within houseyard fences, and therefore not strictly fenced or enclosed by natural barriers but by a fence built to keep pigs away from houses.

fences when cultivating such sites. Mixed-vegetable gardens, on the other hand, occurring overwhelmingly near homesteads,12 are often protected by the fences that enclose houseyards. If not, they require fences to keep out the pigs that frequent settlements, where they are fed and housed overnight. It is noteworthy that men often use quicker and less durable fence constructions to enclose taro and mixed-vegetable gardens. They sometimes prop heavy logs against horizontal cross-struts around taro gardens, or erect barricades of logs, rootstocks, and earth sods, and around mixed-vegetable gardens they may construct temporary fences of interlinked cane grass stems (see chapter 8 on different fence constructions). It is of no consequence that these easier-to-erect fences deteriorate after a year or so, the gardens they enclose customarily abandoned after one crop. There is a marked tendency for gardens enclosed by fences to be abandoned sooner than those protected by natural barriers, whatever the crop. Fences are difficult to maintain long term, not only because they deteriorate but also because pigs interfere with them. Some animals, for example, once they have gained entry to a garden, return time and again to weaken the fence by worrying it with their snouts at vulnerable points or

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leaning or even leaping on it, and when this happens they become much more difficult to keep out. The difficulty families experience in maintaining fences may consequently prompt them to abandon gardens that they would otherwise keep under cultivation maybe for decades if behind natural barriers, which is noteworthy when considering reasons for the abandonment of gardens and the shifting of cultivations—declining yields are only one, not necessarily significant factor (Sillitoe 1996). Regarding ol howma renowned status and enclosure of gardens, there is again no apparent correlation (figure 5.6). While their households have larger areas under cultivation on average, they do not farm proportionately more sites protected by natural barriers. (Indeed, the linear trend analysis suggests that higher status correlates with enclosure of more land using man-made barriers.) There is no correlation either between land rights and enclosure—those claiming land through paternal preference, for example, do not monopolize sites protected by natural barriers. The absence of any correlations between social factors and enclosure of cultivated areas is not surprising in the light of the evidence, for while many gardens occur in locations protected by natural features, sizable potentially cultivable areas remain unfarmed here. There are clearly other considerations to take into account than reduction of fencing work, which is only one of a number of issues that inform choices.

Topography The topography of a location is among these other issues. It comprises several features, including aspect, slope, surface configuration, and altitude (Pospisil 1963a, 85; Ellen 1978). A site’s aspect is significant, for as people explain, all cultivations should be open to the sun, except for those supporting taro.13 The sun should “see” gardens (nat em henday; literally, sun garden see). When establishing a garden, men will fell and pollard any trees that cast a shadow across the area, called wez boway (literally, shade fell). Crops will not flourish in too shady a location because it will, they say, be too cold and damp, not conducive to good growth. When the sun “sees” the land, it warms the soil, keeps the moisture content right, and ensures that it is light and friable, not sticky and cloddy and difficult to cultivate. Also, the greater a crop’s exposure to the sun, the more its photosynthetic activity and the faster it grows (Seavoy 1973). The mountainous terrain of the Was Valley makes it necessary to select sites carefully to maximize the exposure of gardens to the sun. Large areas remain in the shade for considerable periods every day and would make poor garden sites, other than for taro. Men locate the majority of their cultivations so that they face, by and large, between north and east, the direction from which they receive most sun, with the region’s mountain ranges trending from the northwest to the southeast (figure 5.7). The Maring likewise prefer to locate gardens facing northward to maximize insolation (Clarke 1971, 50). The sun “sees” such gardens from the time it rises in the east until midafternoon, when it is in the northwest

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Figure 5.6. Enclosure of gardens compared with social status

A chi-square test gives X 2= 25.8, df = 18, p = 0.10, implying that social status and enclosure are independent. But a linear trend analysis taking the ordinality of variables into account shows evidence of association between status and enclosure with M2 = 17.5, p = 2.94×10−5. Applying ANOVA suggests that both enclosure and status are significant in predicting the size of a garden (by enclosure, F = 20.45, df = 2, p = 2.87 × 10−9 and by status F = 13.99, df = 1, p = 0.00021).

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CULTIVATION SITES AND CHOICE To view this image, please refer to the print version of this book.

Figure 5.7. Aspects of gardens

Testing for randomness confirms that the distribution of aspect data is markedly not uniform, the value of V = 11.99 exceeding the upper 1% probability point. Analysis of variance (ANOVA—taking square root of area to normalize data and fitting directions as independent groups) shows size of gardens does not vary significantly with direction of aspect p = 0.263 (F = 1.27, df = 7 and 534).

quadrant and shines transversely to the fold of the ranges. It is commonly overcast and perhaps raining by the time the sun reaches this point in the sky (Sillitoe 1996, 54–66), and obscured, it infrequently shines for any period on the other side of the mountains. The west- to south-facing slopes are consequently shadier and damper, less promising for cultivation except for taro, which, preferring wet and shady conditions, can tolerate such sites (table 5.5). The slope of the land also influences the amount of sunlight that reaches it. The

CULTIVATION SITES AND CHOICE

147

To view this image, please refer to the print version of this book.

Figure 5.8. Aspect: looking out from sweet potato garden

Table 5.5. Aspects of taro gardens 338°– 22° N No. gdns. %

8 18.2

23°– 67° NE 12 27.3

68°– 112° E 6 13.6

113°– 157° SE 5 11.4

158°– 202° S 3 6.8

203°– 247° SW 3 6.8

248°– 293°– 292° 337° W NW 1 2.3

6 13.6

Area (m2) 4,428 7,536 3,292 4,338 3,407 1,254 544 3,690 % 15.5 26.5 11.6 15.2 12.0 4.4 1.9 13.0 Notes: Testing for randomness confirms that the distribution of taro garden aspects is not uniform at 1% significance level, with V = 2.65. Analysis of variance (ANOVA taking the square root of area and using a trigonometric [cos & sin] transformation of aspect) shows that the aspect of taro gardens does not significantly account for variation in their size (cos [aspect] F = 3.7, df = 1, p = 0.06 and sin [aspect] F = 0.03, df = 1, p = 0.88).

steeper the land is, the less time the sun’s rays are likely to play on it, being obscured by other features, especially if situated outside the north- to east-facing quadrant. A comparison of the aspects of gentle slopes with very steep ones bears this out, for all gardens on very steep slopes face between north and east, whereas a percentage of those on gentle slopes face in other, less favorable directions (table 5.6). The use of gently sloping land of poorer aspect somewhat offsets the limiting effect of aspect—evidence of people exploiting all available cultivable niches—whereas yields from gardens on very steep slopes facing in unfavorable directions would not repay the work required to establish them. The physical inclination of slopes, which varies from negligible to precipitously

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Table 5.6. Site aspect compared with slope N 338°– 22° No. gdns. % Area (m²) % No. gdns. %

4 5.7

NE E SE 23°–67° 68°–112° 113°– 157° 28 40.0

2683 22,220 4.7 38.9 7 11.1

43 68.3

S 158°– 202°

SW 203°– 247°

Gentle slope (30°) 13 0 0 20.6 0 0

Area (m²) 6,230 43,685 11,561 % 10.1 71.1 18.8

0 0

0 0

0 0

0 0

0 0

0 0

0 0

0 0

Note: Testing for a linear-circular association in all the slope and aspect data, R n2 = 0.00334, which suggests no significant association.

steep in this mountainous terrain, is also a consideration with respect to cultivability (Conklin 1957, 36). The Wola refer to slopes as baeray, qualifying to convey steepness: for example, baeray da (literally, incline very) for steep slopes, baeray sha (literally, incline some) for moderately sloping land, and so on. They have little choice in their rugged region but to site many gardens on inclines, and the steepness of some cultivated locations is impressive. Beyond a certain point a slope becomes too steep to cultivate effectively, but this point is surprisingly steep in the New Guinea Highlands, where people regularly cultivate slopes that farmers elsewhere would consider beyond cultivation. The Wola locate the majority of their gardens on slopes of between 10° and 30°, with the largest numbers and area on slopes of between 20° and 30° (see figure 5.9—compare Waddell 1972, 44–56, on Enga cultivations).14 This contrasts with the Simbu, where Brookfield (1973, 146) found that gentleness of slope correlated with cultivation, although he noted soil drainage as a factor too. Drainage is a consideration in the Was Valley. Men prefer to locate their gardens on reasonably steep slopes because this ensures good drainage, which promotes a well-aerated and crumbly structured soil of the sort favored by sweet potato; this crop’s preference for soils that develop on welldrained slopes is one of the qualities that suit it to the region (Hackett 1985; Sillitoe 1996). Topsoil erosion is not as serious as might be expected cultivating such slopes in a wet climate. While increases in slope result in increases in soil loss—as A. W. Wood (1984, 152) has demonstrated for the “Poro Plains and Limestone Ridges” land class of the

CULTIVATION SITES AND CHOICE 149 To view this image, please refer to the print version of this book.

Figure 5.9. Slopes of gardens

Analysis of variance (ANOVA—taking square root of area to normalize data and fitting slopes as independent groups) shows that gardens on level sites and gentle slopes are very significantly smaller than others at p = 50

Notes: A chi-square test gives χ 2 = 50.18, df = 18, p = 7.1 × 10−5, showing significant evidence of association between age and cultivation. Applying ANOVA shows that both who cultivated the garden and age of tenant are significant in determining expected size (by cultivation arrangements F = 29.61, df = 2, p = 4.86 × 10−13 and by age F = 10.32, df = 1, p = 0.00138). a For age groups: < 18, 21–24 = 13; 18–21 = 12; 24–27, 35–40, > 50 = 16; 27–30, 40–45 = 19; 30–35 = 17; 45–50 = 15. b Areas inherited, paid others to clear, abandoned and taken over, cultivated by affines who gave female relatives (daughters, sisters, etc.) areas to plant.

Assisted in clearing

Area cultivated by others b

Area under cultivation

30 years old). 16. I am grateful to my colleague Kate Hampshire for helpful discussions on reproductive issues. 17. To those purists who may criticize us for not living in a traditional Wola house, all I can say is that I should find such a dwelling far too cramped for the conduct of long-term fieldwork, with the demands of keeping detailed notes, etc. 18. This is not to deny the demographic argument that at a population level polygyny may increase overall fertility rates by ensuring that all women of childbearing age are in sexual unions,

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NOTES TO PAGES 227 – 34

outweighing the fact that individual women may have fewer children each (e.g., evidence from Africa shows that populations practicing monogamy have lower overall fertility rates than those practicing polygyny—Lesthaeghe 1989; Randall 1996). 19. This graph and accompanying calculations (and following ones) include only women past childbearing age, which, as noted previously, these demographic data suggest is on average 40 years of age. They also omit women married twice or more, one of whose marriages was monogamous and the other polygynous, as not possible to disentangle monogamous and polygynous effects on their reproductive histories. 20. These numbers of births indicate a mean birth interval of 4.1 years, which compares with Lehmann et al. (1993, 96), who report a mean birth interval of 3 years (or 1.8 years if infant dies) for the Tari basin; Becroft (1967), who reports a mean interval of 5 years (or 1.5 years if infant dies) for the Baiyer Valley; and J. W. Wood (1992, 104), who reports an interval of 3.7 years in Takwi Valley. 21. Wood (105–10) presents persuasive evidence to support his argument that it is length of lactation among the Gainj—in excess of three years—that primarily accounts for their low fertility. Nursing is a significant contraceptive, with high-frequency suckling (he reports 24-hour suckling rates of 160 minutes in newborns, declining to 80 minutes in 3-year-olds) and its slow decline as children grow older. Women experience comparatively few regular menstrual cycles during their reproductive lives—they are either pregnant or lactating and so acyclic much of the time (only 13 percent of married women 20 to 39 years of age were not lactating or pregnant). Another factor affecting fertility is that women’s nutritional status declines cumulatively with each reproductive episode—he attributes this in part to the effects of parity, notably the energetic demands of pregnancy and lactation (111). 22. Adoption does not confound this assumption. It is not widespread in the Was Valley, unlike some regions such as Goroka (Collins 1988, 186). Adoption occurs largely with orphans, close relatives usually taking over their care. The Was Valley surveys noted such cases, and also adolescents who may be mobile and reside with kin other than their parents; this analysis associates them with their social-biological parents and not adoptive kin. 23. So far as I am aware AIDS was not an issue during the period covered by these data. 24. It is probable that these data omit several infant deaths, but such individuals are also omitted from the birth record (i.e., they have gone completely unrecorded). 25. These unstandardized comparisons are of only limited value, the death rate among the Was Valley population being relatively higher, with its young age structure, than older populations such as Europe. 26. The Simbu death-rate data ranged from 6 to 25 persons (Brown and Winefield 1965, 181); for the Baiyer Valley population it was 8 per 1,000 and life expectancy was 58 years (Becroft, Stanhope, and Burchett, 1969, 50, 54). 27. It is difficult to date this event accurately; I estimate that it occurred sometime in the late 1920s to early 1930s. Bourke (1988, 85), commenting on a serious food shortage in the Tari region, notes, “At the time an aeroplane first flew over the area (1 February, 1936), the people were recovering from the shortage, which suggests that it occurred in 1935.” 28. The severity of food shortages can vary considerably from one occasion to another, as evidenced by the impact of the 1972 and 1997–98 droughts. An evaluation of the 1997–98 event (AusAID 1998) found that a significant part of the food aid did not reach intended recipients and/ or was sold. It attributes few, if any deaths, directly to starvation, finding that water shortage was

NOTES TO PAGES 235 – 42

511

more of a threat, although there was some increase in mortality with the breakdown of health services. It concludes that increased population mobility and traditional coping mechanisms (such as resorting to bush foods) averted some deaths. 29. It is probable that the medical cause of death in some cases was not literally starvation but that hunger fatally weakened people so they succumbed to other conditions (Bourke 1988, 86)—nonetheless, so far as their descendants are concerned, the famine was responsible. 30. The death record is considerably more comprehensive for men than women—although evidence from elsewhere indicates that men suffer higher death rates, as women are physiologically better able to survive famine. 31. I did this by working out the ages of those included in the 1973 census who were alive in 1930 and, noting these persons on the genealogy, drew an age isobar line cutting off all those not born then. I then plotted back the probable composition of sem families at that time, knowing these persons’ estimated ages in 1930, and also having data on marriages and deaths tied to events with approximately known dates (such as outbreaks of armed hostilities) that allowed me to establish if deceased individuals were alive or not in 1930. 32. These violent death statistics are modest compared to those reported for some other regions of New Guinea, such as on the nearby Papuan Plateau, where among the small Gebusi population the rate is 5 to 6 homicides per 1,000 persons a year (Knauft 1985, 376–77). Feil (1987, 71) gives some statistics for elsewhere in the Highlands, where the reported death rates in armed hostilities are considerably higher than reported in the Was Valley, accounting for 20 percent of male deaths among the Huli, 25 percent among the Enga, 30 percent among the Tauna-Awa, and 32 percent among the Usurufa; although Feil notes that he thinks these “figures on deaths are highly unreliable.” 33. In tallying up violent deaths, the Wola would wish to include those persons killed nefariously through sorcery (woktoiz or hultort) and poison (mogtomb), which amounts to a total of 13 further men’s deaths in the period under consideration (women unknown): a 40 percent increase in deaths attributable to hostilities. 34. These migration figures include only those persons resident at the time of a census who had either moved into or out of the surveyed communities since the previous census; individuals and families who moved in and back out or out and back in between censuses were not picked up. 35. They contrast with the migration statistics for the nearby Tari basin (Umezaki and Ohtsuka 2002, 259), where in-migration exceeded out-migration in two communities between 1980 and 1995. 36. Although elsewhere in the region the rates were more similar to those reported here, at 4 percent males absent (A. L. Epstein and Epstein 1962, 73). See Riley and Lehmann (1992, 69–75) for a brief history and summary of migration patterns for Papua New Guinea. 37. See Sillitoe 1979b, 27 for the geographical extent of this area for the census communities. 38. The percentage migrating beyond the Was Valley social universe is lower than in the Tari region; Lehmann (2002, 55,56) reports that more than 40 percent of males aged 20–39 years were absent at any time during the 1980s, although the numbers of young men migrating elsewhere for extended periods declined noticeably between the 1970s and 1980s. 39. Calculated using the formula r = ((P1 /P0 ) 1/t−1)100 (Hinde 1998, 154–57). 40. The average annual percent rate of increase for the Highland Simbu population was 0.24

512

NOTES TO PAGES 242 – 59

percent to 2.28 percent (Brown and Winefield 1965, 181), for the Baiyer River was 1.9 percent (Becroft, Stanhope, and Burchett 1969, 50), and in the Wahgi Valley was 2.5 percent (Burton 1988, 25). G. T. Harris 1978 gives figures of 1.52 percent for Simbu and 1.22 percent for Wabag (for 1962 to 1974). 41. We need to interpret this Southern Highlands statistic with caution, as the changes in population reported between 1980 and 1990 for the three Nipa District census divisions of Nembi Plateau (104 percent), Nembi Valley (76 percent), and Wage (92 percent) are improbably high, suggesting shortcomings with the census data of the sort mentioned earlier in this chapter. The reasons for the increasing inaccuracies of national censuses are unclear, but beyond sheer incompetence and access problems, it is possible that there is some political motive, with the central government nominally distributing funds to districts according to a per head of population formula. 42. Using the formula t = loge 2/r. 43. Wohlt 2004, 150–51, notes similar large variations in the Kandep region, of 1.25 percent to 7.5 percent based on genealogical reconstruction. 44. The theme of population decline, even extinction, has featured in studies of the Melanesian region since early times (Rivers 1922); during the period of colonial contact large falls in numbers occurred with introduced diseases decimating some populations, but subsequently many have recovered due to various factors, including improved health care provision (see the early chapters in Ulijaszek 2006). 45. For example, the appearance of an open environment in the Tari Basin around 21,000 years BP is thought to signal human activity, but forest clearance for cultivation is not evident until 1,700 years BP (Haberle 1998), whereas paleoecological evidence from Kuk Swamp in the Western Highlands shows that some cultivation and plant exploitation occurred by 10,220 to 9,910 years and mounding featuring taro and bananas began by 6,950 to 6,440 years BP (Denham et al. 2003). 46. In the context of a sophisticated study of the nearby Raiapu Enga farming system, Waddell (1972) criticizes Meggitt’s land pressure assertions for the Mae Enga. See also Kelly 1968. 47. The demographic pressure may not be what it appears initially. Elsewhere, Brown and Winefield (1965, 189) point out that the Simbu population is barely replacing itself. And Brookfield (1973, 1996) has subsequently revisited the Simbu data to refine the argument, but it remains essentially the same, one of how people manage land relative to their numbers. 48. See, for instance, the contributions to the special 2001 autumn issue of Asia Pacific Viewpoint (vol. 42, pts. 2/3), which focuses on Brookfield’s ideas on agricultural intensification and transformation.

Chapter 8. Pioneering Gardens 1. Except for a few inadequate men mentioned in the previous chapter—ol dimb in Wola. 2. Similar ethnographic data, together with time records, on other subsistence “economicrelated” activities are published elsewhere—on the manufacture of tools and other material goods, refer to Sillitoe 1988, and on the herding of pigs, and hunting and foraging for wild food, see Sillitoe 2003. 3. In addition to photographs of the work (some reproduced here), there is also a film documenting the garden’s establishment entitled Ganonkiyba Garden: Shifting Cultivation in the Papua New Guinea Highlands included on the DVD accompanying this book.

NOTES TO PAGES 259 – 63

513

4. See Sillitoe, Stewart, and Strathern (2002) for detailed data records and further discussion and analysis; I am grateful to Len Plotnicov, the editor of the Ethnology series, for kind permission to use the material again here. 5. Some men possessed polished stone axes up to the beginning of the 1960s; see Sillitoe 1979d, 1988 for further analysis and discussion of this topic. 6. The Ganonkiyba site was situated on the side of a doline basin adjacent to the settled areas of Haelaelinja and Tombem. It had a favorable surface configuration, being generally even, and an agreeably moderate slope overall at 15°, which down slope was a gentler 5° in places. The soil belonged to the Wola hundbiy clayey class (Sillitoe 1996, 279–83); in profile it comprised a dark brown, organic-rich topsoil, overlaying a transition horizon that graded into a bright brown, heavy clay subsoil. The aspect was less favorable, facing northwest (310°). There were no natural barriers protecting it from foraging pigs, which was a further disadvantage, necessitating the construction of a fence and ditch enclosure all around the site. This proved to be one of the garden’s weak points in the long term because once planted, it attracted the attentions of pigs, being within five minutes’ walk of the nearest houses at Tombem, and those of one man proved particularly difficult to exclude after the fence had been erected for some time and weakened by the animals’ activities in places (the threat of pigs was evident before cultivation, the soil heavily turned over in places by their rooting activities). The nearness to homesteads was otherwise an advantage, reducing journey times and work in transporting produce home, largely by women. The area cultivated previously had been fallow for many years, which augured well for fertility, an expectation that in the event proved unfounded; the soil proved taebowgiy, or poor, by Wola standards (this assessment may have been influenced by the pig depredations too, which made the site difficult to maintain after the first crop). 7. The inheritable rights to the land resided with the two Wenja men, Neleb and Unguwdiyp, and their descendants; the three Maenget men had only temporary rights of cultivation, working with me on the garden project (see chapter 4 for further details on the land tenure position). 8. Regarding the composition of the Ganonkiyba gardening party, I influenced it to some extent to comply with my research requirements. 9. This method was less accurate than using a stopwatch but that would have necessitated stop-go interference in the work (which I scrupulously avoided), or impractically, several assistants armed with stopwatches. The probable error in the individual timings was plus or minus five seconds. 10. When splitting logs, for example, men not only deliver ax blows but may stop to adjust the head of their axes or arrange logs more firmly. Similarly, when felling trees they may stop to clear away vegetation. When splitting a trunk longitudinally they may alternate quickly from working with ax to wedge and back again. During any activity they may walk elsewhere to fetch something necessary to the task in hand, and so on. 11. For a comparative review of the various agricultural implements found in the New Guinea Highlands, see Golson 1977b; Steensberg 1980; and Golson and Steensberg 1985. 12. The machete is a significant innovation; if they had only steel axes, men would not cut cane vegetation much more quickly than they did with stone axes. 13. Stone ax heads varied considerably in size, from surprisingly small (weighing 10 grams and with cutting edges 3 centimeters or thereabouts across) to large (weighing 800 grams with cutting edges 10 centimeters or so across). 14. The trees left standing on the Ganonkiyba site following initial clearance included 58

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NOTES TO PAGES 264 – 80

pandans, 14 tree ferns, and 203 broad-leaved trees (on the stone side 45 pandans, 9 tree ferns, and 104 broad-leaved trees, and on the steel side 13 pandans, 5 tree ferns, and 99 broad-leaved trees); of these, 23 of the Pandanus screw-palms remained as mature nut-bearing trees in the finished garden and a few broad-leaved trees as pollarded skeletons; the remainder, including all the tree ferns, were subsequently felled and used for fence stakes or ditch rampart reinforcements (see next section). 15. The times recorded in the tables refer not only to the cutting down of the vegetation but also to cutting it up for burning. 16. At Ganonkiyba we cleared eighty-seven named woody species from the forested side and thirty from the cane of the site. Regarding vegetation cut down, the biomass removed in clearing the cane community was some 5.2t and from the wooded area 13.0t. 17. The times discussed here deal only with the time men were actually working, and not the total time they spent on the job, including that resting. If the time they spent resting is taken into consideration, it increases the above times by about one-third (the steel times by 32.9 percent and stone ones by 36.7 percent). 18. Obtained by adding up the squares of the radii (measured in meters) of all the trees cut down. 19. The index also ignores the hardness of different timbers, although for comparative purposes it is reasonable to assume that they would have been about equal on either side. Every effort was made to allow for the varying hardness of different woods by using stone and steel equally on all kinds of timber in subsequent work, such as in making fence stakes. 20. It is reasonable to assume, when comparing the two areas, that these kinds of plants occurred equally on both sides, but it is necessary to have them in mind when considering the total amount of vegetation cleared, as this account documents only the trees, sizeable shrubs, and cane cleared. 21. Each row on this graph again includes the gardens of eight men, with those of highest status at the top; for details of status assessment, see chapter 4, note 22. 22. This payment was prompted by the anthropologist’s presence; the person assisted me regularly in my work and as a consequence had little time for gardening and so paid his FZS to clear him an area adjacent to a site that he was clearing for himself. 23. At first it seems puzzling that people allow pigs to roam free, demanding much work enclosing cultivations, but there are a range of possible reasons including animal health and nutrition (Sillitoe 2003, 350). 24. See Steensberg (1980, 111–23) for a comparative review of fencing strategies in New Guinea. 25. Today men use spades to dig ditches, whereas previously they used large, narrow, paddleshaped digging sticks (Sillitoe 1988, 74–76). 26. See Bayliss-Smith and Golson (1992a, 21) for comparative data on labor expended digging ditches elsewhere in the New Guinea Highlands. 27. The anthropologist’s ax—the preferred wedge—was left jammed in cracks overnight on a number of occasions during the work at Ganonkiyba! 28. Adjusted to compensate for time differences. 29. The actual, not adjusted, data on the trunks cut in half are as follows:

Stone ax Steel ax

No. tree trunks cut in 1/2

Av. circum. (cm)

Wood index

183 315

22.4 27.1

454.5 1,190.0

NOTES TO PAGES 280 – 99

515

30. This figure is somewhat inflated because they split some stakes from timber felled using stone axes but rejected as too hard to split. 31. The difference between the number of stakes split and the number sharpened (58 more stakes were apparently sharpened than split) is accounted for by the few stakes cut while clearing (when some felled trees were cut into stake lengths). 32. It says a lot for their powers of estimation, considering the size of the Ganonkiyba garden, that of the 1,091 stakes the men prepared, only 20 were left over. 33. Sometimes they use Miscanthus cane. 34. They also thought that the soil on the cane grass stone side was wetter and stickier, being on a gentler slope with some flattish areas. Heavy rain, just before work started on levering out rootstocks, further worsened conditions, making their removal more difficult. 35. The actual average steel time was 11 minutes, 45 seconds. 36. The larger average circumference of the stone ax–lopped branches shows this effect at 16.8 cm compared to 13.8 cm for steel.

Chapter 9. Cultivating Gardens 1. Bol is the Wola name for Ischaemum polystachym grass, which predominates on such sites. 2. Any small tubers remaining are collected and fed to pigs. 3. For a review of comparative ethnography on grassland clearance, including the use of bamboo grass knives, see Steensberg 1980, 53–59; Golson 1977b, 155–57. 4. Women do not compost or ash-core mounds in new gardens. 5. Regarding soil fertility, evidence suggests that phosphate and potassium availability, and possibly nitrogen, are the main limiting nutrients (Floyd, D’Souza, and Lefroy 1987; Floyd, Lefroy, and D’Souza 1988). While some crops (sweet potato, Setaria, Rungia, etc.) can yield acceptably on soils relatively low in extractable phosphorus, even potassium, so long as its ratio with nitrogen remains favorable, minimal levels have to be maintained for tolerable yields. Compost represents a substantial boost in their supply to crops. Only phosphorus may remain inadequate. It is the boost in available potassium that is probably central to the success of composted mounds in sustaining the region’s semicontinuous farming regime; it is well established that grasses have high potassium contents. 6. The lower montane forest in New Guinea, at 2, 500 m altitude, has been estimated to hold less than 20 percent, according to organic matter partition (Edwards and Grubb 1977). This is small compared to lowland rain forest in some other parts of the world, such as Brazil, for example, where the biomass store accounts for 73 percent of total cations in alluvial lowland forest (see Greenland and Herrera 1975, table 6). 7. The burning also results in the loss of some elements that go up with the smoke as gas, notably nitrogen, sulfur, and carbon (Pivello and Couthino 1992). 8. The soil pH increased after burning on average by one or more (Sillitoe 1996, 363), which accords with findings elsewhere; in West Africa, for example, where a mean increase of 0.9 is reported (Nye and Greenland 1960), and in South America, where an increase of 0.7 is reported (Sanchez 1976, 367–68). The extent of the increase varies depending on the soil, vegetation cover, and thoroughness of the burn. The decrease in acidity induced by the alkaline ash also probably contributes to the increased rates of nitrification observed after burning off. 9. Some agriculturalists even suggest that burning may overall have an adverse effect on fertility (C. C. Webster and Wilson 1999).

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10. Although the midyear usually features drier months—Sillitoe 1996, 58–60. 11. Three men on the previous genealogy (figure 8.24)—Yogbal, Kuwliy, and Gogoda— helped with the burning off, and all of the women on the next genealogy (figure 9.5) assisted (those women without numbers after their names did not help with the planting—the numbers show areas in which women planted crops [1 = Twaen’s area, 2 = Kwalten’s area, 3 = Horshiyow’s area, 4 = Bortnonk’s area, 5 = Leda’s area]). 12. Although the danger may not be as severe as imagined on the Inceptisols that dominate the Wola region—Sillitoe 1996, 139–64. 13. It is evident that topsoil moves down slope, for example, heavy rain transports it (especially where pigs root and loosen the soil by turning it over, as at Ganonkiyba before enclosure), a process particularly apparent when exposed following clearance (Sillitoe 1996, 157). The Wola call this superior black topsoil occurring in down-slope pockets suw hemem; it is a dark, crumbly structured, “grease”-rich, fertile soil. 14. See Sillitoe 1988, chapter 3, for details of the tools used and how employed. 15. See Steensberg 1980, 71–80, for a review of mounding in the New Guinea Highlands. 16. Mounds are arranged in tiyt (rows) running down and across the slope. The mond gan (gullies) between the mounds carry off rainwater and reduce runoff erosion risks, as does the convex shape of mounds. This is particularly important just after cultivation when the soil is exposed and before the crops have established a ground cover (Waddell 1972, 149–66). Nonetheless, particularly with heavy rains, entire new mounds (not consolidated with sweet potato roots and vines) are sometimes swept away. 17. The variation in the size of the mounds women build on different occasions also contributes to the spread of times; for example, while the average size of mound in this sample was 2.1 meters in diameter across the convex heap of soil, mounds measured ranged in size from 1.71 to 2.51 meters in diameter, representing considerable differences in the volumes of soil moved. 18. The advantages of intercropping are well known (Vandermeer 1989). The growing of crops intermingled together in the same garden results in a stratified stand of vegetation—creeping foliage (such as sweet potato vines) over the surface, low-standing herbs (green leafy vegetables), followed by plants of middling height (such as taro), then tall plants (such as sugarcane), and finally the tallest crops (notably pandans and bananas) spreading out over all. It is a highly effective use of space, achieving a high photosynthetic rate for any area (i.e., many plants are able efficiently to fix solar energy per unit area). And roots underground replicate the efficiency of foliage above, tapping all zones for nutrients, growing to different depths and extents. Intercropping reduces competition between plants that mature at different rates and are ready for harvesting at different times. It also discourages the spread of plant-specific insect pests, which cannot pass casually from plant to neighboring plant. It affords good protection to the soil too, important for conserving the nutrients released in the slash-and-burn strategy. 19. See Sillitoe 1983, 188–216, for further discussion of crop occurrence. 20. Hviding and Bayliss-Smith (2000, 98) recount similar arrangements on New Georgia. 21. This is not the total because some harvesting of long-term crops continued after the harvest survey finished, but the returns would have been small compared to those recorded. 22. The times are rounded up to the nearest hour. 23. To convert the times in table 9.9 to approximate to Clarke’s work-days per acre comparison, divide by twelve. 24. The time spent resting totaled 757 hours per hectare (788 hours using stone tools) for all activities from clearing to planting a new swidden; the time spent resting while recultivating an

NOTES TO PAGES 318 – 22

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established garden totaled 22 hours per hectare (23 hours using stone tools), but this is doubtless an underestimate based on a short sample time (for instance, breast-feeding women sometimes take extended breaks to attend to infants). 25. These figures are for the cultivation of taro wetland sites, which are more labor intensive with demands for drainage work. 26. All crops harvested at Ganonkiyba were weighed using a spring balance, those cooperating in the garden project bringing all harvested crops for weighing before any culinary preparation. 27. They are depressed for several reasons. First, the Ganonkiyba soil, as noted, proved taebowgiy (poor), that is, hard and cloddy with little iyba (grease) necessary for fertility. The dark pombray topsoil horizon was also relatively thin across the site, putting the compact clayey subsoil within the rooting zone of crops. The postcultivation revelation of the poor soil agreed with people’s assertions that they cannot assess a site’s fertility accurately before cultivating it (Sillitoe 1996), for everyone was optimistic that the garden was going to yield well while we were pioneering it. Second, the garden suffered from a plague of rats, which attacked some crops, notably those propagated from seed. Third, some pigs from nearby homesteads at Tombem “discovered” the garden, as noted previously, and proved particularly troublesome, breaking in several times and rooting the soil over in places. Fourth, as if these setbacks were not enough, the garden suffered some erosion damage while the soil was exposed, following a heavy rainstorm soon after it was planted. (The areas denuded of crops by these events are omitted from the yield calculations.) All of these problems combined persuaded the gardeners to abandon the Ganonkiyba plot after one harvest and cane grass soon recolonized it. I also suspect that some potential tensions foreseen in the future between the gardeners, who would not have combined forces on the Ganonkiyba site if not brought together by the ethnographer, may have contributed too. 28. Sampled by the mound, and not entire garden. 29. In times of food scarcity due to adverse climatic perturbations (chapter 7), such as those witnessed in the late 1990s with the El Niño effect, people may eat these second-rate tubers. 30. It is ironic that some international agencies now support the documentation of languages thought to be on the verge of extinction, on the grounds that they are repositories of knowledge that the world should not lose—rather as we should conserve biodiversity, indeed language documentation is sometimes explicitly linked with this objective as stores of knowledge about local flora and fauna—and yet few see connections to culture, of which language is one aspect, with anthropology distancing itself from such endeavors as tainted with the idea of discredited salvage ethnography. 31. It is perhaps noteworthy that those who advocate paying more attention to colonialism and history work in coastal regions of New Guinea or on smaller islands where Europeans arrived several generations ago, leading to extensive change in precontact sociocultural arrangements, which are now beyond recall. There is a substantial documented history of contact and its consequences, such that it is difficult to imagine any meaningful research there not focusing on it. In contrast, some Highlands valleys had experienced only a few years of Australian colonial rule before ethnographers arrived, and precontact sociocultural arrangements were not only a live memory but continued to feature in much everyday life. If anyone imagines, such as R. M. Smith (1980), that three or four Australian patrol officers and a handful of “native policemen” governed the lives of tens of thousands of people or that a single agricultural officer initiated significant change in the farming regime, he is mistaken. In the Was Valley, subsistence activities and social order continued to depend on “traditional” arrangements, and carry on doing so today. It is untrue to characterize discussion of these as “an ahistoricism out of control, a licence for distortion

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masquerading as the ‘ethnographic present’” (89), which is not to deny that what we write today is history tomorrow. 32. These data complement and expand on previously published data on stone and steel tool use in artifact manufacture and other activities (Sillitoe 1979d, 1988). 33. I had purchased the axes from other people and subsequently deposited them in the P.N.G. National Museum and Art Gallery, Waigani, Port Moresby. 34. This relates to the fears that men have about women’s reproductive physiology (chapter 6; Sillitoe 1979c). 35. In the first survey, 76 percent of the area under cultivation comprised gardens cultivated a second or subsequent time (n = 257 gardens), and in the second survey 62 percent of gardens (n = 391 gardens). 36. In the first survey, men cleared 560 m2 and in the second 1,465 m2 of new gardens, and women tilled 1,670 m2 and 1,894 m2 of established gardens respectively. 37. These calculations are made on the assumption that every garden was under cultivation for eighteen months. They omit time spent harvesting, weeding, and traveling to gardens. 38. In the first survey, they would have invested a calculated 301 hours each to cultivate the area under crops, and in the second survey 464 hours each. 39. Assuming that men and women each contribute 50 percent of the time put into cultivating new gardens, and women 100 percent of the time in recultivating established areas. In the first survey, women would have invested a calculated 505 hours each to cultivate the area under crops and men 85 hours, and in the second survey, women would have invested a calculated 673 hours each and men 222 hours.

Chapter 10. The Labor Question 1. The extrapolations—using the previous chapter’s time-and-motion findings for establishing and maintaining gardens (excluding weeding and harvesting), taking the total area under cultivation at the time of the two garden surveys, and assuming gardens remain productive for 18 months on average—are as follows: 1st garden survey & population 2nd garden survey & population Average both surveys

Women (hrs. person−1 day−1) 1.38 1.84 1.61

Men (hrs. person−1 day−1) 0.23 0.61 0.42

2. The proportion of time that people spent on different cultivation tasks calculated as follows:

Men Clearing Enclosing Rooting Burning Planting

Time-and-motion

Time-expenditure survey

14% 19% 43% 17% 7%

24% 42% 28% 3% 3%

NOTES TO PAGES 331 – 35 Womena Burning Planting Cutting & pulling up vegetation Mounding

11% 9% (both new & estab. gdns.) 12%

6% (inc. in mounds) 24%

68%

36% (inc. some planting)

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34%

a

Calculations done on the basis of every m2 of new garden women cultivate, they cultivate twice the area of established garden—36% to 64% of area.

3. Weather records indicate that the months of the time-expenditure survey were wet, although not markedly more so than average. 4. Classified in the following time-expenditure analysis according to the task the respondent said she had spent most time engaged on. 5. Seven of the women who took part in the pilot participated in the full survey and five of the men; a total of nineteen women and twenty-one men cooperated in the surveys. I am grateful to all those who participated in the surveys, in return for a token payment at the end, for their patience and good humor. The women (numbers in brackets indicate first and second surveys): Maenget Kwalten (1 & 2), Maenget Orlaem (1), Maenget Wariyn (1), Mayka Wen (1 & 2), Mayka Hendep (1 & 2), Mayka Nonk (1 & 2), Mayka Hundbin (1), Mayka Huwn (1), Mayka Lenday (1 & 2), Mayka Puliym (1 & 2), Mayka Morom (1), Mayka Nanainj (1), Mayka Naelomnonk (1 & 2), Mayka Wariyem (2), Puwgael Saliyn (2), Puwgael Piriyn (2), Maenget Ibnawaem (2), Mayka Ebel (2) and Maenget Sal (2). And the men: Huwlael Em (1 & 2), Wenja Olnay (2), Maenget Korobol (2), Puwgael Erow (1 & 2), Ind Mom (2), Wenja Puwn (2), Ind Pes (2), Huwlael Ton (1 & 2), Wenja Yogbal (1 & 2), Kolomb Pet (1 & 2), Mayka Muwlib (2), Maenget Tensgay (2), Huwlael Kot (1), Huwlael Pel (1), Huwlael Lem (1), Wenja Sol (1), Mayka Kot (1), Mayka Pes (1), Mayka Sal (1), Maenget Pundiya (1), and Ind Kobiab (1). I am also grateful to my wife, Jackie, for helping me with the survey and encouraging the ready cooperation of women. 6. Waddell and Krinks (1968, 72) used the same method among the Orokaiva, and Waddell (1972) among the Enga, of daily interviews supplemented with observations of some individual movements. 7. I have attempted this level of documentation in other work, which complements these time-survey data (see previous chapters on farming; Sillitoe 1988, 2003 on artifacts and animals), such that interested readers can determine the likely proportion of time persons spent on tasks that make up activities, such as in manufacturing various artifacts and different crop cultivation and animal husbandry tasks. 8. Waddell (1972, 229–331), who conducted a similar survey with some Enga, notes similar methodological shortcomings. 9. For further discussion of methodological issues involved in time-budget studies, see Carlstein 1982; Grossman 1984a; Gross 1984; Ulijaszek 1995. 10. A recent collection of essays edited by James and Mills (2005) criticizes this approach for omitting to consider history as a component of any appreciation of time. The criticism is misplaced, I think, rather like chiding the compilers of today’s bus timetables for having no concern with the hostelries of former stagecoaches. The implication is not that we should ignore history and mythical time—rather, that they are different issues from those of contemporary reckoning

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and budgeting of time. While awareness of time past will inevitably inform understanding of time present (chapter 9), this is a separate matter to the current calculation and use of time. 11. Literally, “cicada talk,” the time that cicadas start to drone. 12. The Enga have a similar vocabulary (Meggitt 1958, 75). 13. Literally, day uwk one, day uwk two, day uwk three; the word uwk is a numeral classifier (Sillitoe 2007). 14. The derivation of this word is unclear. 15. The days of the week are as follows: Horondon (“big day”—Sunday), Kongonmubon (“first work”—Monday), Kongonkabon (“second work”—Tuesday), Kongontebon (“third work”—Wednesday), Kongonmogon (“fourth work”—Thursday), Waeswaeson (“wash-wash”— Friday), and Horgenkon (“little day”—Saturday). 16. According to Gell (1992, 291–92), the Umeda people of the Western Sepik liken the moon to a tuber that varies in its growth cycle, as lunations vary in duration. I have never heard anyone allude to similar ideas in the Was Valley. 17. The impact of the adoption of the Gregorian calendar varies across New Guinea. On the nearby Papuan Plateau it has had a considerable impact, perhaps due to the small and vulnerable population, B. B. Schieffelin (2002) associating it with missionary attempts to obliterate the indigenous past as an impediment to Christian conversion. 18. In the end, the only sure way I could determine the span of the seasons was to ask every month for a year what the season was and note responses in a diary. This brings to mind Turton and Ruggles’s (1978) account of disagreements among the Mursi of Ethiopia as to the month at any time. 19. Meggitt (1958, 76–77) notes the same issue for the Enga but maintains that they keep the lunar and solar sequences in step using a thirteen-month year. 20. Nihill (1988, 267) notes that the nearby Anganen mark time in a similar way, its passage “experienced through birth and death, the succession of generations, the trees a man’s forebears planted or gardens they used.” 21. Literally, girl/boy sense not has. 22. Few of us today, I venture, would subscribe to the idea of “timeless cultures” (Bloch 1977; Munn 1992, 98–100; Perkins 2001, 92–10), as opposed to conceding and seeking formulations that represent different cultural insights and conceptions of time and its passage (Gell 1992, 315). 23. Gell (1992) puts considerable store by Gale’s (1968) distinction of “A-series” and “Bseries” time (A-series = past → present → future, and B-series = before vs. after). While the above Wola vocabulary might suggest an A-series conception of time, I think that there are other phrases that equally indicate a B-series representation, such as ombez ombez and ereb ereb, which are similar to English “long, long ago” and “far, far future.” 24. E. R. Leach (1961c, 124–31) suggests a zigzag line while musing on Kachin and Greek conceptions of time. 25. In a commentary on Mauss’s work The Gift, Derrida (1992, 8) thought-provokingly relates the idea of the gift to the circle, “one of the most powerful and ineluctable representations” of time. The circle represents the relations of reciprocity that gifts imply, the circuit of indebtedness out of which he argues it is necessary to break to make gifts proper because “for there to be a gift, it is necessary [il faut] that the donee not give back, amortize, reimburse, acquit himself, enter into a contract, and that he never have contracted a debt” (13). A gift cannot belong to the circle of presents (Christmas, birthday, etc.) that presuppose reciprocation, given that the

NOTES TO PAGES 349 – 61

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principle guiding his “reflection on the gift” is that “to reduce the latter to exchange is quite simply to annul the very possibility of the gift” (76), with intriguing implications for Melanesian ethnography (chapter 10). In a typical metaphorical play he refers to the word “present” as signifying both a tense and a gift, which he thinks is not due to chance because the gift, really to exist, would have to be given out of time, in an ever-present instant that inhibited indebtedness, so breaking out of the circle of time that makes it impossible (10). Otherwise, “the gift is annulled in the economic odyssey of the circle as soon as it appears as gift or as soon as it signifies itself as gift, there is no longer any ‘logic of the gift,’ and one may safely say that a consistent discourse on the gift becomes impossible” (24). The Wola have no such idea of defying reciprocal relations central to exchange, and so beg the use of the term “gift” to label their transactions. 26. Direct comparison is difficult, as Waddell omits some activities from his analysis such as resting, preparing food and eating, and making artifacts. The results of Salisbury’s (1962, 217–19) time-budget analysis are even more difficult to compare as he considers only men, while Grossman’s (1984b) include a range of quite different cash-earning activities. 27. These times include all activities except resting, eating, and sleeping. 28. See also Malinowski 1925, 926–30. Subsequent writers have taken a similar line, such as Wallman in a volume on the anthropology of work, who defines work “as the production, management and conversion of the resources necessary to livelihood” (1979, 20), and Firth (1979, 192) in the same volume, who tells us that the Tikopia had a concept of work that indicates expenditure of energy for accomplishment of ends, at some sacrifice of comfort or leisure. Panoff (1977, 7) glosses work for the Maenge of New Britain as activity aimed at the production of useful things. 29. Although we need to exercise care with the involuted English class system where wealth does not necessarily translate into class recognition; for example, if a nominally unemployed person is wealthy from drug dealing—wearing expensive jewelry and designer clothes and driving an expensive sports car with tinted windows—our golfers are unlikely to consider him an equal. 30. These are not inadequate men called ol dimb, who invariably do not marry either. 31. They may extend this to bayaib bay, which is to do something. Another verb meaning “to do” or “to make” is waeray, but it applies to artifacts largely. 32. See Salisbury 1962, 218–19 for comparative data on activities undertaken by men of different social standing, although they are difficult to interpret as the “big men” suffered from considerable sickness during the survey. 33. Differences in age confound these comparisons to some extent, as does the relatively short duration of the survey in relation to the frequency of some activities—e.g., men’s exchange activities are dictated to some extent by the occurrence of social events over which they have no control (such as deaths), such that those occurring during the survey period in part influenced participants’ transactional activity. 34. A. M. Strathern 1988, 179 notes that the Melpa refer to “work” as kongon too, and the word may conceivably have found its way into the Southern Highlands from the Hagen region. In the previous chapter she suggests abandoning the term labor for purposive activity in the Hagen region (160). 35. People also apply the word kongon to the monotonous work demanded of migrant laborers on plantations, and today onerous work for wages. 36. While this chapter draws on Arendt’s phenomenological discussion of activity, it questions the distinction, which draws on deep-rooted European assumptions, between three forms of activity as fundamental to the human condition, namely, biological labor, cultural work, and social action.

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37. While this observation remains true for many, those with some education often expect something else from life today other than following in their parents’ footsteps as subsistence farmers. 38. It has also led to some bizarre political-economic arrangements, such as spendthrift eighteenth-century states taxing landowners but not wealthy merchants because, according to this view, commerce results in no net product (Boss 1990, 37). 39. The subsequent use of these terms in sustainable livelihoods approaches to development appears to be independent of Bourdieu; these development approaches seek to give them some direct applicability by suggesting how we might measure such capital (Bourdieu 1984 likewise attempts to measure cultural and social capital), albeit with questionable results that suggest these amount to the imposition of inappropriate capitalist ideas elsewhere. 40. Unless when his grandparents pass away they leave their money to the church and not him because they consider him a lousy grandson, or he fails his examinations because he does not understand the material covered in the missed programs and cannot enter on the career he wishes. But they are another story, although they illustrate, as argued below, the dangers of reducing complex human behavior to make a point in relation to a single theory. 41. Certainly prior to intrusion of the capitalist world with its many tempting goods, and excluding sociopolitically transacted wealth—see following chapters.

Chapter 11. Exchange I am grateful to Tim Bayliss-Smith and Peter Matthews for their generous comments and valuable suggestions on this chapter. 1. The Duna cultivate taro gardens in similar swampy locales (Stewart and Strathern 2002, 235). 2. According to Purseglove (1988, 64), adequate levels of potassium are particularly important; the crop also responds noticeably to phosphate applications. 3. Bayliss-Smith (1985, 298), although acknowledging the contribution of declining soil fertility and increasing weed competition, is of the opinion that pest infestation, notably of Papuana spp. beetles, is important in encouraging a shift of site (see also Powell et al. 1975; Swift 1985; Bayliss-Smith and Golson 1992a, 14–15). While these beetles, among other pests (Perry 1977), sometimes damage Was Valley taro gardens, no one has ever told me that their presence obliges them to move. It is possible that beetle damage varies with altitude and consequent differences in soil temperatures, insects usually being sensitive to temperature. 4. It is possible that Tensgay was taking the opportunity to demand further payment from me following the dispute that I had inadvertently provoked over access to garden land (chapter 4), which may have still rankled with him—illustrating not only how ethnographers are sucked into the flow of everyday life and subsequently contribute to the historical context that informs social events (Watson 1970; Goldman 1983), but also, again, how they frequently learn by committing gaffes (maybe, if we had not had the land dispute, Tensgay would not have demanded any payment from me and I could still be ignorant of the taro garden taboo that his compensation demands taught me). 5. This technique is common among Austronesian speakers in Polynesia too (Peter Matthews, pers. comm.). 6. I am grateful to the following persons for allowing me to tape record their taro incantations, for discussing their meaning with me, and for giving me permission to reproduce them: Ho-

NOTES TO PAGES 381 – 407

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boga Ongat, Hoboga Wiyt, Kolomb Aegol, Maenget Kem, Puwgael E’row, Huwlael Kot, Wenja Yogbal, Hoboga Nem, Ind Orliyn, Wenja Unguwdiyp, Tabul Labay, and Maenget Pundiya. They were keen for me to record them, being concerned that such spells will become extinct because of mission teaching, now they are Christians who no longer have use for such ancestral devices, evidence of “devil worship.” 7. I adopt the same interlineal translation conventions as used by Malinowski (1935, 28–30) in his study of Trobriand gardening spells. 8. Bayliss-Smith (pers. comm.) found similar “watery” taro cultivars in the Bimin Valley, said to be reserved as pig food, and one that he had analyzed for its food value had a lower energy (i.e., starch) content than more esteemed cultivars. 9. Common scrub hen, Megapodius freycinet, and wattled brush turkey, Aepypodius afrakianus. 10. White-bibbed fruit dove, Ptilinopus rivoli and white-throated pigeon, Columba vitiensis. 11. Sometimes people refer to surrounding populations by the commodities that arrive from them. Those to the north are Hetliyp (Helung in spell) horokor ol (literally, salt burn men—i.e., those who supply salt); those to the south are Hondsok homborgor ol (literally, oil pour men—i.e., those who supply cosmetic oil); and those to the southeast are Tolhaen kaeraekor ol (literally, narrow-blade-arrow cut men—i.e., those who make narrow-blade arrows). 12. This is an edible fern; it is a source of starch in some Pacific regions (Peter Matthews pers. comm.). 13. A. M. Strathern (1980) subsequently questioned the relevance of dualistic natureculture–framed constructs to the Hageners. 14. Setaria palmifolia. 15. Amaranthus tricolor and Nasturtium schlechteri respectively. 16. Hviding and Bayliss-Smith (2000, 120–22) suggest that linguistic evidence in New Georgia, the western Solomons, with many special terms relating to taro cultivation, is evidence of the crop’s former importance. The Wola lack such an extensive vocabulary, although they have many terms for different taro cultivars (Sillitoe 1983: 40), not that this is necessarily indicative of antiquity, as they have considerably fewer terms for some other ancient crops. 17. See Morren (1986, 101–12) for a discussion of the various factors that have prompted the Mountain Ok increasingly to switch from taro to sweet potato. 18. I am grateful to Tim Bayliss-Smith for pointing out this possibility to me. 19. We see a similar process contemporarily with people switching to new high-yielding sweet potato cultivars as they arrive in their region. 20. If the taro-yield data in Bayliss-Smith (1985, 311) are any indication, with 2.4 to 4.4 tons in the nearby Tambul region and 7.8 to 8.7 tons in the Jimi Valley. 21. One of the awful aspects of unemployment in capitalist society, in addition to depriving families of an income and so reducing standards of living, is that it denies individuals purposeful activity, which is often central to their sense of identity and personal worth. 22. Sweet potato comprises something in the order, by weight, of three-quarters of the food eaten by the Wola (Sillitoe 1983, 239). 23. The density of planting at 4,347 taro per hectare is less than that for wetland taro cultivation at Kuk and Baisu, with 11,410 and 9,831 plants per hectare, respectively (Bayliss-Smith and Golson 1992a, 14). 24. One of the places from whence the Charma shell necklaces of the kula originate. 25. At the bull’s-eye, among near-kin and neighbors, we find “generalized reciprocity”

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(gifts), followed by “balanced reciprocity” (expectation of delayed equal return), with more distant kin and acquaintances in the outer rings, and finally, off target, “negative reciprocity” (purchase) with strangers and those living far off (Sahlins 1972, 199). 26. More recently, in a New Guinea context, A. M. Strathern (2004, 89) postulates that as relationships come first, so the “exchange items, things, can indeed be ‘anything,’” which is not strictly true, as just anything is not acceptable, only items of acceptable value (see Sillitoe 1979b, 151). 27. A view that parallels existentialism and the proposition of authentic behavior, which are not, I think, helpful in this context, the Wola not seeking to controvert the collective morality of exchange in a search for freedom. 28. People do give one another gifts in informal contexts; for instance, a courting couple may give one another bananas, pandan nuts, and tobacco, among other things, but these are not part of any formal transactional sequence. 29. The medieval term prestation also fails to convey the position, its association with feudal dues making it quite inappropriate in an acephalous context. 30. I am grateful to Vassos Argyrou for bringing Derrida’s work on the gift to my attention and for interesting correspondence on its significance. 31. He is severe in his criticisms, asking, for instance, “What is the semantic horizon of anticipation that authorizes him to gather together or compare so many phenomena of diverse sorts, which belong to different cultures, which manifest themselves in heterogeneous languages, under the unique and supposedly identifiable category of gift?” (26). 32. According to Sigaud (2002, 336), this critique is misplaced, as Mauss did not use the word don (gift) in this sense at all but was discussing “prestations,” or payments that oblige a return, being particularly interested in the nature of the obligation to reciprocate. 33. Some years ago, during a symposium on exchange at the Australian Museum in Sydney, Tom Harding first planted the seed of doubt in my mind, over a beer in the sun, about the propriety of talking about ceremonial exchange when there was little ceremony. 34. See Sillitoe 1979b, 142–50 for further discussion of exchangeables and their evaluation. 35. This may include use value, time, and skill involved in manufacture, as well as scarcity of raw materials.

Chapter 12. The Exchange Economy? 1. Except for the occasional abnormal events resulting in devastating failure of crops and previously death involving starvation. 2. Imported into the Highlands region at a few centers and diffusing outward over large areas. One of the first direct importations of seashells into the Southern Highlands region occurred on an aerial reconnaissance in 1936, during which some government officers threw out handfuls of cowries, the government anthropologist F. E. Williams, one of the party, dryly commenting in his subsequent report that he hoped “none hit an up-ward gazing Tarifuroro between the eyes” (Sinclair 1969, 188). 3. See I. Hughes 1978 for an informative account of the impact of shell inflation in the Highlands. A. M. Strathern (2004) has recently talked of inflation differently, with respect to the increase in exchange activity (such as “paying parties”) that occurs when people perceive that cash is in sort supply and they seek to increase the amounts flowing to them (the same response

NOTES TO PAGES 419 – 42

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as postulated happened when the reverse occurred with inflation in the supply of wealth in the Highlands, notably shell, leading to an increase in transactions—e.g., by Salisbury 1962). 4. A sense of keeping up with the times may also have played a part, when those visiting other Highland regions realized that shell wealth was no longer acceptable there, creating the impression that only those living in the boondocks did so. 5. Unless something unprecedented was to occur to upset the established regime, such as occurred with the arrival of the outside world in the Highlands to supply more seashells than people could have imagined existed previously, as noted above—the consequences of which are still working themselves out, particularly the use of cash in transactions. 6. Although they turned me into someone with a regard for constant negotiating and maneuvering, such that on one occasion on a return journey from the Pacific when we stopped off in Mexico I found myself, much to my wife’s consternation, in street markets just bargaining for the hell of it to see how low I could push prices! 7. These debt transactions are saen, and the Wola have a set of customary expectations about such arrangements (chapters 2 and 3; Sillitoe 1979b, 248–55; Lederman 1986b, 81–85). 8. It is not the case that such men receive large amounts of pork in return from others, only what they are able to muster—it is by exceeding what the average man can achieve that they achieve renown: this is their “payoff ” (Sillitoe 1979b, 266–69). 9. See Sillitoe 2003 for further ethnographic details on pig production. 10. While men focus on upcoming exchange obligations, this does not imply that they do not think some way into the future and maneuver their commitments according to anticipated demands to meet their obligations, particularly the more successful (whereas others seem to leave things to the last minute and panic to find necessary wealth). The way in which the successful manage large exchange portfolios by memory alone, without written records, is impressive. 11. This assumes thorough processing to yield white flour; if not thorough, stored sago, when stale, can prove toxic with oxidation of residual polypenols, resulting in sago haemolysis and fatalities (Stanley Ulijaszek pers. comm.). 12. If they feature polygynous unions, ambitious men will have validated these in the first place through their demonstrated ability to muster the necessary additional bridewealth almost single-handedly. 13. For making artifacts, see Sillitoe 1988. 14. According to Isaac 2005, 17–18 the Trobriand “economy” features three spheres of exchange: subsistence products, prestige goods, and kula wealth. 15. A. M. Strathern (1988, 159) also uses the term transformation in referring to spheres of exchange, in a somewhat different way to signify the switch from one sphere to another, resulting in the “creation of wealth items.” A few pages later (163) she talks about things appearing “to be created by transactions, not by work.” 16. I am grateful to Linus Digim’Rina of the University of Papua New Guinea, who participates in the kula, for confirming the position with respect to wealth in kula exchanges. Several of the essays in Akin and Robbins (1999) deal with the issue of the persistence or “enclaving” of local wealth in sociopolitical exchange contexts. Tambu comprises small discs of nassa shells (Nassa camelus) threaded onto lengths of rattan, often stored in tire-like coils (see T. S. Epstein 1968, 19–21). 17. See N. Thomas (1991) who further criticizes the idea; see also A. J. Strathern 1982a; A. M. Strathern 1988, 151–65.

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NOTES TO PAGES 442 – 46

18. This formulation recalls Wagner’s (1981) “objectifying obviation” or “obviating objectification” approach, which switches subject and object in a subsequent clause, as in phrases such as “Anthropology studies human beings, human beings study anthropology” or, more appositely here, “Good relatives make gifts, gifts make good relatives.” While some find such recursive statements particularly insightful, others find them puzzling, if not annoying, bringing to mind a comment by Murphy (another who favored seeing social processes as dialectic arrangements, in a loosely speaking structuralist approach), who referred to it as “thick writing” that engages in a “curiously competitive game in which obscure literary allusions and baroque rhetorical forms are weapons, a kind of egghead rap-talk” (1994, 56). The form of words about things being persons is strongly reminiscent of Mauss (1970, 11) too, as evident in chapter 3. 19. While there were a few prized shells called “bone pearl shells” (mowmaek hul ) that men exchanged infrequently (Sillitoe 1979b, 143), possibly advertising their ability to manage wealth by being able to hold onto such objects, they were few in number and certainly had no connotations of hegemony, as Weiner (1992) speculates. 20. According to Macintyre (1984) the Austronesian languages of the Massim use prefixes to distinguish between what she calls the semialienable, alienable, and inalienable. Wealth, including pigs and seashells, is alienated if people incur no debt in receiving it, and semialienated if they do (following the discharge of such a debt, it is alienated); it is never inalienable (defined as part of the self ). Although the Wola do not make such linguistic distinctions, these ideas somewhat reflect their practices. 21. This is not to suggest that people identify with their pigs in the sense that they embody something of their being—indeed, such a suggestion would likely be taken as offensive. (And consumption of pork would intimate cannibalism, a disgusting practice associated formerly with Foi neighbors.) And interestingly, they can be more difficult to alienate because, as sentient creatures, they may try to find their own way back to their former herders. 22. Although in order to kill animals, persons have to clear outstanding exchange obligations to others, including the aforementioned transformation payments (i.e., be free to take the animals out of circulation, not beholden to anyone who might have a claim to the wealth at that time— Sillitoe 1979b, 92–97). 23. While capitalist arrangements of production are considerably more complex in the contemporary globalized world, many think that this analysis of exploitative relations remains relevant in its essentials. 24. I confess to a certain bias toward Ruskin, his eccentricities notwithstanding, as he lived in the same part of south London where I grew up, its memorials to him, including the nearby Ruskin Road, having an effect. (Marx, on the other hand, lived in north London, not far from my paternal grandparents’ home, as a visit to his grave near the Archway made me aware.) 25. It would be unrealistic, of course, to expect any European intellectual’s ideas at that time to empathize with tribal ways, which is a reason, I think, why Marxism has proved so problematic to understanding these orders. 26. The implication is not that subsistence independence alone is sufficient to ensure freedom from domination; many peasant households are independent in livelihood terms but are dominated by external political authorities—such independence does not, for example, guarantee against conquest by more powerful outsiders, as happened in England with the Romans and Normans. 27. While a complex series of historical events and culturally specific processes resulted in the late nineteenth-century European capitalist circumstances that interested Marx—such as

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the enacting of notorious laws by feudally descended landed-gentry governments to dispossess the poor by enclosing common land to which they had rights—this general question has wide applicability. 28. These “markets” are small, informal affairs, dependent largely on small numbers of poorly and irregularly paid schoolteachers, aid post orderlies, and other government employees purchasing food, and involve small sums of money insufficient to pose a threat to the insulation of subsistence production from wealth transaction. 29. The idea that means of livelihood somehow influence the form of society has been with us since the Victorians, such schemes paralleling their classic means of subsistence classification, although these are now more elaborate as we have considerably more knowledge of many cultures. 30. Some may see in this allusion to equilibrium no more than an attempt to resurrect structural-functionalism from the cemetery of social theories, dusted off with some historical awareness. But this is where parallels with economic theory take us. When such critics give away all their money, no longer having any use for it, their views may merit serious attention, having come up with a viable alternative, but until then they are part of such a dynamically static market system.

Chapter 13. No Economy, No Development? 1. When he read these comments on descent, Andrew Strathern suggested that they show the “need to recognize that ‘descent’ as an idea existed in the past . . . its current manifestation a result of capitalist-style change.” I have no quibble with this view, for descent from the ancestors clearly features implicitly in the definition of sem groups, but having a notion of descent does not, of course, necessarily equate with it serving as a principle of political organization. 2. Ernst refers to this process as “entification.” 3. See Healey 1985, 48–51, for a discussion of the potential impact of mineral exploitation on land rights in the Jimi Valley. 4. I am grateful to Tim Bayliss-Smith for drawing my attention to this issue. 5. Intriguingly, Halvaksz (2007) argues that cultivating cannabis in the Wau region mediates tensions evident between acting communally, which he thinks is a “traditional” value, and individually, which he thinks is an aspect of Melanesian “modernities.” 6. Threatening the scholarly integrity of anthropology, as noted in chapter 1—Shore and Wright 1999; Wulff et al. 2009. 7. Regarding my view that the ethnography should determine the direction of research, I think that this is partly a reaction to structuralism, on which I was academically apprenticed as the great theory of the time, and to which I early developed suspicions regarding its apparent unsubstantiated intellectual flights of imagination (it seemed that we could imagine binary metonyms everywhere in a metaphysical world of metaphorical interpretation), and subsequent events suggest that I was correct, structuralism being the twentieth-century equivalent of nineteenthcentury social evolutionism in this respect. 8. Unlike, for example, Gregory 1982; A. M. Strathern 1988; Weiner 1992; Godelier 1999; Sykes 2005 in their discussions of the Melanesian “gift.” 9. While eschewing the grim utilitarianism associated with him and the north of England! 10. In a recent debate supporting the anthropological monograph, Handelman (2009, 218) suggests the term “analytic ethnography” for such an approach.

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11. In a different context, K. E. Read (1955, 282) makes a similar observation for some Eastern Highlanders: “Abstract ideas of the good, of the basis of right and wrong, do not interest the Gahuku-Gama. Their moral rules are, for the most part, unsystematized, judgments refer to specific situations rather than to any explicit ideology.” 12. A. J. Strathern (1979, 103) translates similar assertions among the Melpa as “it’s his affair” and “how can we know their minds, they are another set of men,” pointing out that a “strong assertion of individual autonomy is being made in these Hagen aphorisms.” 13. It was Carlyle who apparently dubbed economics the “Dismal Science” in response to Ricardo’s ideas (Lee 1981, 71). 14. The shunning of psychology, which pays more attention to the individual, is intriguing, as several prominent early ethnographers, such as Rivers, McDougall, and Myers of the Cambridge Torres Straits Expedition, made significant contributions to psychology. 15. The challenge has been simmering for decades; for instance, Driberg (1932, 55), who has remained a shadowy footnote figure in anthropology, perhaps for expressing such early opinions, observes, “The influence of the group on the individual . . . is apparently so much greater in primitive societies than it is in our own that one school of anthropology definitely asserts that the individual, as an individual, hardly exists, except as a cog in the mechanism of the community . . . they go to the extent of assuming the existence of a group mind, which overrules the mentality and activities of the individual. We have tried to show that there is no foundation for such a conception, and have stressed, perhaps unduly, the fact that the individual has an independent existence and that, while the interests of the group must always be dominant (for in them are also bound up the interests of the individual), yet there is still a wide scope for individual initiative.”

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Index

Abaya, M. M., 19 Abelam, 229 Accumulation, absence of, 434–35 Acephalous order, 44, 72, 121–25 Acquaye, B., 456 Action sets, 23–24, 77–79, 291 Adoption, 510 Afghanistan, 467 Age, estimation of, 222, 509 Age and distance to gardens, 136–38 Age distribution, 221, 508 Agent based modeling, 54, 58, 72, 82, 491 Agnatic bias, See Patrifilial bias Agnatic descent, See Segmentary agnatic descent Agnatic relations and status, 119–21 Agrawal, A., 95 Agribusiness versus organic farming, 480 Agricultural economics, 14, 480 Agricultural intensification, 249 Ak valley, 19, 176, 356, 419, 498 Albert, S., 459 Alexander, J., 53 Alienation, 321, 445, 526 Allan, W., 198, 211 Allen, B. J., 15, 139, 155, 176, 179, 187, 218, 220, 221, 223, 227, 239, 241, 244, 248, 249 All-purpose money, 441 Altman, J. C., 171, 322 Altruism, 59–60, 61, 63, 495 Ancient crops, 398, 523

Andaman Islands, 507 Anderson, T., 456 Anganen, 498, 520 Anthropological economics, principles, xvii– xviii, 480 Anthropological methods, limitations of, 127– 28, 175, 380, 389, 390 Anthropologist and garden dispute, 97–98 Antweiler, C., 463 Arapesh, 67 Archaeology, 246, 324, 378, 394–96, 398, 435, 496, 506, 512 Areas under cultivation, 203–5 Arendt, H., 51, 361 Armed conflict, deaths in, 238 Armed conflict (saend), 125, 248, 361–62, 475, 499 Armstrong, W. E., 405, 414 Asaro, 467 Assistance establishing gardens, 189 Austen, L., 338 Australian Aboriginals, 173, 487, 505 Australian Agency for International Development, 16 Australian colonial rule, 323, 324, 468, 517 Authority, absence of, 5, 52 Avarice, 419–20, 433 Axelrod, R., 58, 59, 72, 92 Bachelors, 225, 506 Bacon, Francis, 487

562

INDEX

Baea, M., 222 Baines, J., 236, 249 Baiyer valley, 221, 509, 510, 512 Baktaman, 380, 401 Baland, J. M., 93, 95, 98 Ballard, C., 212, 234, 378, 394 Bamford, S., 47 Bardhan, P., 91, 111, 458 Barley, N., 6 Barnes, J. A., 46, 112, 458 Barok, 48 Barr, J., 52 Barrows, R., 456 Barth, F., 38, 122, 377, 380, 401, 407, 438 Baruya, 433 Basalt stones, 383–84, 385, 386 Bayliss-Smith, T., 16, 213, 214, 275, 318, 377, 378, 394, 395, 396, 398 Becker, G. S., 254, 368, 369, 421 Becquemont, D., 354 Becroft, T. C., 221 Betel nut, 467 Beetles, 522 Begon, M., 198 Behavior, contradictory, 2–3 Behavior, variation in, 50–53 Behaviorist versus normative, 5, 65 Bell, J. A., 467 Benediktsson, K., 36, 456, 466, 467 Berndt, R. M., 24, 44, 79 Biersack, A., 65, 122, 324 Big men, 24, 79, 128, 164, 187, 330, 493, 499– 500. See also ol howma Bijon, J., 456 Bilaterality, 116, 401 Bimin valley, 523 Bird of paradise headdresses, 432–33 Bird of the Thunderwoman film, 245, 500 Bird-David, N., 1, 171 Birds of Paradise, 392 Birdsell, J., 173 Birth intervals, 510 Birthrate, 223–24, 509 Births, 223–32 Births, polygynous and monogamous unions, 227–30 Blau, P. M., 38, 374, 407, 408, 413, 446 Bloch, M., 340 Bohannon, P., 438, 441 Bomagai-Angoiang, 2 Bongaarts, J., 225, 227, 228 Bonito-hooks, 434 Bonte, P., 354

Borrie, W. D., 216 Boserup, E., 173, 214, 249, 250, 253 Boss, H, 368, 435 Boundaries, definition of, 86–87, 116, 210 Boundaries and domination, 123 Boundaries problems with, 67, 121–24, 200, 207, 219, 497, 498, 502 Bourdieu, P., 29, 37, 53, 368, 452, 469 Bourgeoisie, 445 Bourke, R. M., 16, 206, 234, 249 Bowers, N., 220, 223, 225, 227, 235, 238, 353 Boxing trophy analogy, 444, 450 Bredmeyer, T., 459 Bridewealth, 81, 452, 492, 506 Bridge building, 30–31 Bromley, D. W., 91, 98 Brookfield, H. C., 15, 95, 96, 97, 112, 129, 134, 139, 148, 151, 187, 199, 211, 212, 214, 234, 247, 248, 249, 250, 318, 394, 405 Brown, P., 15, 95, 97, 112, 134, 139, 187, 199, 211, 214, 216, 220, 221, 224, 238, 247, 248, 318 Brush, S. B., 198, 199, 204, 206, 212, 214 Bulmer, R. N. H., 399, 401 Burchett, P. M., 221 Burling, R., 366, 367, 368, 369, 396, 421, 422 Burnham, C. P., 211 Burning off, nutrients released, 298–99 Burning off vegetation, 297–302 Burt, B., 98, 112 Burton, J. E., 221, 222, 233, 235, 238 Business (bisnis), 44 Buxton, L. H., 363 Caldwell, B., 217 Caldwell, J. C., 217 Caldwell, P., 217 Cambridge University, 4 Camerer, C. F., 58 Campbell, F., 36, 38, 67, 408 Cane grass defensive screen, 212–13 Cane grass rootstock removal, 287–88, 381 Cane grassland, 160 Cannabis, 467–68, 527 Cape Hoskins, 250 Capitalist economics, xvii–xviii, 1, 13. See also Market economy Capitalist property relations, 361, 446 Cargo cults, 322 Carlstein, T., 129, 318 Carneiro, R., 198 Carney, D., 464 Carrier, J., 34, 321, 409, 444

INDEX Carr-Saunders, A. M., 227, 238 Carrying capacity (K), 196–215, 242, 250, 506 Carrying capacity, definition of, 198 Carrying capacity, equations, 198–99, 211 Carrying capacity, problems with, 199, 214–15 Carrying capacity, range of values, 206, 207, 214 Carrying capacity, and technical innovations, 203, 504–5 Carrying capacity, use in archaeology, 215 Cash, 440–41, 444, 489. See also Money Casuarina trees, 155 Cattle projects, 462 Census, 217–20, 485, 507–8 Ceremonial exchange, xviii, 413, 524. See also Sociopolitical exchange Childbearing ages, 509, 510 Choice, 29, 49–50, 52, 126–28, 164–67, 254–55, 369–73, 496 Christianity, 7, 24. See also Missionaries Christiansen, S., 135 Circular time, 339–40, 520 Clarke, W. C., 2, 15, 96, 129, 134, 144, 165, 199, 203, 212, 214, 318, 324, 394 Classification, 497, 498, 502 Clearing gardens, 258, 261–70 Clearing gardens, cutting down shade, 291–94 Clearing gardens, payment for help, 269 Clearing gardens, root removal, 286–91 Clearing gardens, techniques used, 262–66 Climate, 19, 206 Cluster analysis of site selection factors, 166 Coffee, 462 Cohen, A. P., 44, 116 Coital frequency and fertility, 228–30 Collaterality and land rights, 115 Collective action, 77–79 Collective conscious, 44 Collective-interests individual, 85, 110–16, 124, 248, 373, 446, 451, 460 Collective sociological focus, 34, 36–37, 39, 44– 45, 48, 60, 123, 412, 442, 476, 491, 495, 499 Colman, D., 1, 14, 253, 480 Commodities, 321–22, 411, 425, 442 Common property, theory, 94–95 Common property, defying economic expectation, 93–94 Common property regimes, 91–95, 111, 458, 496 Comparative method, 51 Compensation, 74 Composite persons, 494 Conception, ideas about, 229 Concepts, universal relevance of, 10 Condon, R. G., 229

563

Conflict, See armed conflict; violence Conklin, H. C., 14, 15, 126, 148, 155, 198, 318 Connection with regional/national economies, 206–7, 237, 242 Conservation, 245–46 Consumption, 41–42 Consumption, immediate, 434, 436 Co-operation in clearing gardens, 267–69, 460 Co-operative interaction, 58 Corporate groups, 23, 110–16, 459, 493 Corporate groups, land defining, 111–12, 118 Corvée labor, 359 Cosmetic oil (wombok), 443, 479, 523 Cretan paradox, 68–69, 470 Crittenden, R., 204, 220, 224, 236, 242, 248, 249, 323, 464 Crocombe, R. G., 88, 456 Crook, T., 377, 380, 383, 399 Crop yields, 319–20 Crop yields, proxy for area cultivated, 205 Crops, 16, 483 Crops, diversity in new gardens, 299 Crops, introduced, 212 Crops, location of, 310–12 Crops, planting of, 302–13, 380–82, 388 Crops, planting techniques, 305–10 Cultivating beds ( paend ), 310 Cultivating mounds (mond ), 308–10 Cultivation cycle, 199–203 Cumulative patrifiliation, 46. See also Segmentary agnatic descent Curtin, T., 457, 459 Custom, 474 Dahlman, C. J., 93, 94 Dalton, G., 26, 27, 29, 83, 84, 170, 171, 172, 405 Damon, F., 338 Dani, 40 Daribi, 77 Davidson, D. A., 211 Day, divisions of, 337 Days, names of, 337 de Coppet, D., 44 de Lepervanche, M., 46 De Smet, R. E., 318 Death-rate, 232–33, 235, 238, 510 Deaths, 232–39 Debt (saen), 46, 81, 493, 494, 525 Decision making, 127, 167, 254–55 Deforestation, 246 Demian, M., 353 Demography, See Population Denham, T. P., 378, 394

564

INDEX

Derrida, J., 412, 413 Descent theory, 45–46, 247–48. See also Segmentary agnatic descent Devore, I., 171 DeWalt, B. R., 463 Dewar, R. E., 198, 199, 200, 207, 212, 215 DfID, 465 Dickens, Charles, 470 DiMaggio, P., 58 Diminishing marginal returns, 257, 372 Diminishing marginal utility, 256 Diseases of taro, 389, 395 Dispute settlement, 72–75 Disputes and residence change, 240–41 Distribution, 13, 405 Ditch excavation, 284–85 Ditches, 274, 502, 514 “Dividual,” 47, 65, 494 Division of labor, See Occupational/sexual division of labor Dixon, P., 52 Domestic mode of production, See Household mode of production Donigi, P., 457, 458 Donne, J., 63, 451 Douglas, M., 30, 38, 39, 54, 59, 64 Dove, M. R., 129, 160 Dreikiki, 155 Dubner, S. J., 34, 367 Duesenberry, J., 476 Dumont, L., 34, 37, 42, 44, 56, 83 Duna, 522 Dunbar, R. I. M., 174 Durkheim, E., 26, 34, 36, 44, 48, 50, 470 Dwyer, P. D., 285 Dyson, T., 236 Earth oven, 392–93 Ecological catastrophe, absence of, 249–50 Ecology, xviii, 216, 234, 251 Economic anthropology, xvii, 11 Economic assumptions, challenges, 167–68, 396, 478–79 Economic concepts, universal relevance of, 374–75 Economic development, 25, 51, 69, 92, 356, 454–56, 460–68, 522 Economic development, local notions of, 463–64 Economic development and land, 456–59 Economic laws, 255–57 Economic principles informing social interaction, 367–73, 398, 408 Economic terms, danger of misuse, 171

Economic theory, 9, 451, 527. See also Formal economic assumptions Economics, as material well-being, 13 Economics, biblical roots, 488 Economics, definition of, 27–30, 84, 364–69, 422 Economics, material and immaterial issues, 364–65 Economics and politics, blurring of, 13–14 Economics as social process, 365–75, 376 Economics defined by choice, 369–74 Economies of scale, 457 Economizing decisions, 396–98 Economy, as subsistence, 13, 422, 477 Economy, definition of, xvii–xix, 7, 9, 11–13, 354 Economy, embedded in society, 29 Edelman, M., 454 Effort, economizing on, 396–97 Egalitarian social relations, 48 Egalitarianism, 24, 49, 324, 443, 447, 450, 474–75, 476 Ekeh, P., 38 El Niño, 204, 234, 236, 249, 517 Elasticity, 479 Ellen, R. F., 126, 129, 134, 144, 153, 200, 203, 207, 211 Ellis, F., 434, 480 Enclosing gardens, See Garden enclosure Enga, 40, 129, 148, 247, 248, 339, 349, 511, 512, 519, 520 Engels, F., 351 English words, inappropriateness of, 9–10. See also Translation, problems with Epidemics, 233 Epimenides of Crete, 68–69 Episteme, 502 Epstein, A. L., 216, 224, 239, 242, 459 Epstein, T. S., 216, 239, 405, 414 Equality, 42, 330, 437 Equilibrium, problems with, 214–15 Equivalence, value of, 74 Erecting fence, 282–84 Ernst, T., 458 Ethnocentricism, 6, 37–38 Ethnographic evidence, problems, 5 Ethnographic film, 15 Ethnographic method, challenges to, 53–54, 509 Ethnographic moment, 322, 323, 453 Ethnographic present, critique of, 323 Ethnographic-determinism, 4–9, 15, 34, 48, 54, 65, 127, 181, 244, 324, 334, 443, 468–73, 476, 480, 487, 488, 493, 497, 505 Ethnography, 4, 324, 471

INDEX Ethnography and computer databases, 54 Ethnography not fiction, 470 Etoro, 139 Evans-Pritchard, E. E., 75 Evens, T. M. S., 52, 62, 165 Evidenced-based social science, 487 Exchange, xviii, 14, 27, 40, 77, 80–83. See also Sociopolitical exchange Exchange, as social investment, 420, 423 Exchange, as total social phenomenon, 421 Exchange, competition and, 83, 452 Exchange, inhibiting capital accumulation, 462–63 Exchange, moral imperative, 82–83 Exchange, social features, 12, 452 Exchange acceptability, 410 Exchange competition, 423 Exchange rates, 414–15 Exchangeables, 23, 410, 413, 444 Exchangeables, consumable, 409–10 Exchangeables, durable, 409–10 Exchangeables, imported, 410 Exchangeables, inflation in, 3, 323, 414, 415, 419, 444, 463, 524–25 Exchangeables, locally produced, 410 Exchangeables, manufacture of, 430–34 Exchangeables, non-production ethic, 430–34 Exchangeables, origins of, 424, 430–34 Exchangeables, purchase of, 425–26 Exchangeables, restricted market, 425–28 Exchangeables, scarcity of, 3 Exchanges, typologies of, 406–7, 523–24 Exclusive property, 444 Existentialism, 524 Experiential knowledge, See Tacit knowledge Exploitation, 13, 448–49 Exploitation of women, 329, 330, 350–51, 449 Exploitation, subversion of, 446–48 Extension, 463 Fabian, J., 321 Factors of production, 253–54 Fallow, 18, 199–200, 247, 296 Falls, R., 19 Family, as consumption unit, 12 Family, as production unit, 41–42 Family, composition of, 22 Family developmental cycle, 191, 356 Famine, depressing population, 234–36 Famine, impact on death-rate, 235–36 Famine relief, 237–38 Famine/food shortage, 206, 234–38, 340, 377, 394, 510–11, 517, 524

565

Famy, F. N., 155 Farming regime, 15–19 Farming systems research, 14 Fasu, 66 Feacham, R. G. A., 199 Fehr, E., 58, 60 Feil, D. K., 40, 86, 212, 234, 324, 394, 473 Female labor, 257 Female labor, in gardening, 327–29 Female time budgets, 341–46 Fence stakes, making of, 275–82 Fence stakes, sharpening, 281 Fence types, 143, 271–74 Fencing and ditching times, 274–75 Fernandez, J. W., 123 Fertility rates of women, 509–10 Feynman, R. P., 68 Fieldwork training, absence of, 8 Fig trees, 387 Fingleton, J., 457 Firing techniques, 300–301 Firth, R., 6, 13, 27, 28, 29, 42, 50, 175, 216, 252, 367, 373, 405, 406, 414, 434, 438, 446 Fischbacher, U., 60 Fishing, 256–57 Fisk, E. K., 3, 171, 251, 435 Foi, 153, 428 Food consumption, proxy for area cultivated, 205 Food storage, 434–36 Forest, 9, 160, 504, 505, 515 Forest, areas of, 176 Forest clearance, rate of, 246–47, 250 Forest demons, 246 Formal economic assumptions, inapplicability of, 251–52, 253, 257, 366–67, 454 Formal economic principles applied to sociopolitical exchange, 424–30 Formal economic principles, generality of, 28 Formalism, 11, 170, 367, 405, 414, 480, 481, 488–89, 494 Formalism, defined, 170 Fortes, M., 5, 39, 44 Fosberg, F. R., 212 Foster, R., 47 Fournier, M., 6, 123 Fowles, J., 10 “Fractal person,” 47 Frank, R. H., 57 Frazer, J., 4, 48, 171 Freedom of action, 35–36, 450. See also Individual freedom Freeman, J. D., 129, 318

566

INDEX

Fricke, T., 217 Frost, 153 Functionalism, 6, 29, 391 Fur, 438 Gahuku-Gama, 33, 40, 528 Gamboge tree, 384 Ganonkiyba, site characteristics, 513 Ganonkiyba case study, methodology, 259–61 Ganonkiyba case study, participants, 259, 261 Ganonkiyba garden, case study, 106, 259–93, 513, 517 Ganonkiyba garden film, 489, 512 Garanger, J., 324 Garden areas, supplied by other kin, 187–89 Garden boundary markers, 96–97, 310 Garden cultivation, stages of, 15–19, 200–204 Garden damage by pigs, 143–44, 271, 517 Garden dispersal, benefits of, 134 Garden enclosure, 271–86 Garden enclosure, types of, 141–42, 503, 514 Garden enclosure, use of natural features, 139–40, 142 Garden enclosure, splitting fence stake timber, 278–80 Garden enclosure, timber suitable for fence stakes, 275 Garden margins, 275 Garden rites, 392–94 Garden site, ideal, 166 Garden site selection, 118, 126–68 Garden site selection, altitude, 151–54, 503 Garden site selection, aspect, 144–46, 147, 503 Garden site selection, configuration, 151–53, 503 Garden site selection, distance, 128–39, 502 Garden site selection, enclosure issues, 139–44 Garden site selection, options, 164–65 Garden site selection, slope, 146–51, 503 Garden site selection, social issues, 163 Garden site selection, soil, 151 Garden site selection, topographical issues, 144–55 Garden site selection, vegetation, 151, 155, 159–62 Garden site selection, women’s input, 135–36 Garden site variability, 164 Garden surveys, 178–179, 483–84, 500, 502, 505–6 Garden types, 16–17, 92, 189, 203, 489, 503 Garden yields, See Crop yields Gardening, labor arrangements, 163 Gardens, clearing vegetation, See Clearing gardens Gardens, distribution of, 87

Gardens, time cultivated, 199–200 Gardens database, 179–81 Gardner, D., 96, 123 Garia, 40 Garner, P., 222 Gazelle Peninsula, 216, 239, 242 Gebusi, 511 Geddes, W. R., 36, 153, 155, 363 Gell, A., 255, 335, 364 Genealogical time, 339 Genealogies, bilateral aspect, 113–14 Geographical Information Systems (GIS), 54, 179 Geology, 19–21 Ghana, 508 Giddens, A., 53, 452 Gift, 41, 412–13, 425, 442, 493, 500, 520–21, 524. See also Exchange Gift economy, xviii Gift exchange, 82, 321 Gilberthorpe, E., 66 Gintis, H., 92 Glassow, M. A., 204, 214, 215 Globalization, 455 Gnau, 66 Godelier, M., 24, 79, 324, 361, 410, 433, 442 Goldman, L., 46, 98, 122 Golson, J., 16, 378, 394, 395, 398 Goodfellow, D. M., 28 Goroka, 335, 510 Government, 24–25 Gowdy, J., 1, 172 Graebner, D., 47 Granovetter, M., 61 Grau, R., 95 Green compost, 296 Greenland, D. J., 298 Gregory, C., 38, 321, 322, 411, 419, 440, 442 Grossman, L., 334, 335, 349, 350 Grounded theory, 487 Groups, See sem Groups, fluidity of, 122 Gudeman, S., 7, 13, 36, 56, 57 Guiart, J., 10, 469, 470, 475 Haddon, A. C., 4 Hagen, 79, 241, 441, 499, 501 Hageners, See Melpa Halvaksz, J., 467 Hannerz, U., 36 Hanunóo, 318 Harbury, C., 1, 28, 256, 257 Hardesty, D. L., 199, 203, 205, 206, 212 Harper, J. L., 198

INDEX Harris, G. T., 222, 240 Harris, M., 5 Hart, D., 405 Hartemink, A. E., 378 Hartland, S., 44 Harvesting, 314–15, 399–400. See also Crop yields Harwood, T., 15 Haugerud, A., 454 Hayden, B., 198, 199, 206, 207 Hays, T. E., 65, 67, 70, 122 Health, ideas of, 32 Hecht, S. B., 298 Hegigio, 176 Herskovits, M., 28, 367, 407 Hidden hand of Adam Smith, xviii, 83, 452 Hidden hand of exchange, 61, 83, 408, 452 Hide, R. L., 203 Hierarchy, transformation danger, 447–48 Hill, A. G., 217 Hinde, A., 217 Hirschman, A. O., 57 History, 69, 321–24, 517, 519 Hobbes, T., 76 Hogbin, I., 88 Holism, 29, 122, 465 Holl, A., 124 Holmes, S., 42 Homans, G. C., 38, 44, 374, 407, 413 Homo oeconomicus, 11, 58 Honeyeater, 392 Hoop-pine, 384 House types, 224–26 Household garden areas, variations, 204–5 Household mode of production, 417, 460, 461, 477, 489 Households, self-sufficient, 244, 269, 417 Houses, attitudes to residence, 134 Houses, location of, 134 Hughes, J., 231, 414 Huli, 218, 229, 231, 241, 243, 341, 349, 498, 511 Hull, V. J., 217 Human ecology, 173 Human nature, 2 Humphreys, G. S., 149 Hunter-gatherers, 48, 72, 171, 172, 173, 434, 436, 504, 506 Hutchins, E., 98 Hviding, E., 214, 275, 378, 395 Iban, 318 Identity, 116–19, 455 Identity and land, 85–86, 119, 457

567

Ideology, 3–6, 469, 488, 493 Imbong’gu, 498 Inalienability, 321, 441–45, 456, 526 Inclusive property, 444 Indigenous knowledge, 463, 468 Individual, 30–39, 45, 63, 110–11, 490 492, 496 Individual, biological, 32 Individual, and economic thought, 30, 495 Individual, as maximizer, 34 Individual, social, 32, 491, 496 Individual, Wola ideas of, 32. See also Melanesian individual Individual and collective focus, 61–62 Individual calculation and competition, 56–57, 83. See also Self-interested individual Individual/co-operative behavior grid, 58–59 Individual freedom/sovereignty, 35, 48, 60, 363, 443, 475–76, 528 Individual variation, 49–55, 494, 497 Individual versus group/society, 33, 62–65, 450, 496, 497, 501, 528 Individual versus person, 34–35 Individual-group grid, 39, 59, 494–95 Individualism, 37–38, 62, 360, 412, 490 Individualistic behavior, examples, 30–31 Industriousness, 355–56 Inequality, 324, 330, 352, 437, 521 Informal gifts, 524 Ingold, T., 435 Integrated development, 464 Intellect (konay), 32–33, 70 Intensity of land use, 199–203 Intercropping, advantages of, 516 Inter-group competition, 493 Inuit, 173, 253 Ipomoean revolution, 212, 394, 395 Iteanu, A., 377 Jimi valley, 500, 523 Johnson, M., 378 Johnston, D. M., 67 Jolly, M., 49, 324, 330, 353 Josephides, L., 46, 47, 49, 257, 324, 329, 330 Jung, C. G., 450 Juo, A. S. R., 298 Just, P., 173, 374 Kachin, 520 Kahneman, D., 167 Kainantu, 335, 349 Kaitilla, S., 86, 98 Kamu valley, 1 Kandep, 505, 512 Kang, B. T., 298

568

INDEX

Kapauku, 1–2, 30, 40, 66, 129, 187, 318, 405, 438 Kapferer, B., 407 Kaplan, D., 1, 171 Karam, 399, 401 Kaugel valley, 220, 223, 227, 353 Keig, G., 19, 240, 242, 250 Kelly, R. C., 49, 139, 220, 243, 247, 285, 324 Kerridge, E., 95 Kertzer, D. L., 217 Kewa, 498 Kimber, A. J., 318 Kingdom, E., 457, 458 Kinoshita, F., 199, 214, 249 Kirby, K. M., 119 Knauft, B. M., 243 Knetsch, J., 456 Knotted string calendar, 336, 339 Knowledge as performance, 15, 127–28, 312 Kocher-Schmid, C., 177 Koestler, A., 62 Kohn, A., 57, 63 Kopytoff, I., 439 Krinks, P. A., 349, 364 Kuk, 512, 523 Kuklick, H., 37 Kula, 64–65, 82, 376, 405, 406, 407, 433, 438, 441, 444, 523, 525 Kwakiutl, 488 Labor, 191, 253–54, 352, 460, 465 Labor, attitudes to, 269, 285–86, 418 Labor, imposition of concept, 360–61 Labor, productive versus unproductive, 364–65 Labor migration, 16, 221, 240, 250, 441 Labor value, 361 Lactational infecundability, 225, 228, 510 Lae, 250, 467 Lai, D., 222 Lakau, A., 117, 457, 459 Lake Kutubu, 19, 66, 153, 176, 222, 356, 379, 428, 429, 443, 464, 479 Lamont, M., 6, 123 Land, total arable area, 207–11 Land abundance, critiques of, 176–77 Land and identity, sense of belonging to, 117, 124 Land area under cultivation, 175–76 Land area under cultivation, by age, 190–91 Land area under cultivation, by social status, 119–21, 187–91 Land classes, by topography, 211 Land degradation, 212, 248 Land disputes, 96–110, 121, 125, 500–501

Land lease, 96 Land reform, 459 Land scarcity, 109–10, 167–68, 243, 250–51 Land shortage argument, 247–50 Land tenure, 22–23, 71, 85–125, 443, 456–57 Land tenure and garden type, 91–92 Land Tenure Conversion Ordinances, 459 Land tenure, flexibility of, 95–97, 109–10, 118 Land tenure, hypothetical model, 89–91 Land tenure, negotiations over, 98–100, 121, 124 Land tenure, principles of, 86–95 Land tenure, semgenk land pool, 88, 91 Land tenure, temporary cultivation rights, 95– 96, 100–101, 112, 124 Land tenure, transfer of, 101–5, 106, 115, 122, 500 Land types survey, 210–11 Land use, assessment of potential, 210–11 Land use, dynamism of, 214–15 Land use, long term prospects, 251 Landon, J. R., 211 Langness, L. L., 44, 112, 458 Languages, documentation of, 517 Lawrence, P., 24, 40, 79, 88 Laziness, 355 Le Clair, E. E., 170 Lea, D., 44, 88, 457, 459, 464 Leach, E. R., 5, 6, 39, 338 Leadership, 79–80, 187, 499 LeBlanc, S. A., 215 Lederman, R., 23, 41, 44, 46, 47, 63, 80, 85, 123, 164, 257, 377, 411, 419, 475 Lee, A., 446 Lee, R. B., 171 Lehmann, D., 216, 221, 223, 224, 229, 233, 241, 242 Lemonnier, P., 212, 394 Lévi-Strauss, C., 407 Levitt, S. D., 34, 367 Levy, T. E., 124 Lewis, G., 66 Life, stages of, 339 Life force (wezow), 32–33 Linear time, 339 Lipset, D., 467 Lipsey, R. G., 1, 28, 256, 257 LiPuma, E., 46 Local groups, composition of, 23 Local magistrate (lus kiap), 74–75, 499 Locke, J., 351, 352, 361 Logging, dangers of, 245 Long, N., 36 Lundsgaarde, H. P., 88

INDEX MacWilliam, S., 457 Maenge, 363, 521 Maine, H. S., 12 Male time budgets, 341–46 Male/female labor as partnership, 353–54, 437, 449 Male/female labor in gardening, 329, 330–31, 332 Male/female ratios, 220–21, 239, 508 Male/female relations, 49, 136, 499 Male/female time budgets compared, 346–51 Malinowski, B., 6, 10, 34, 39, 44, 57, 64, 128, 352, 363, 376, 381, 390, 391, 405, 406, 407, 433, 438, 444, 474 Mallett, S., 47 Malthus, T. R., 173, 250, 253 Mandeville, B., 61, 452 Mansbridge, J. J., 57 Maori, 82 Maps, projection issues, 505, 506, 507 Marecek, T. M., 15 Marglin, S., 127 Margolis, H., 57, 63 Maring, 2, 129, 134, 144, 318, 389, 496–97, 506 Market economy, 12, 26, 27, 29. See also Capitalist economics Market integration, problems with, 460 Market transaction, 12, 405 Markets, 460, 461, 466–68, 527 Marriage, 52, 407. See also Bridewealth Marshall, A., 13, 27 Marsupial, 86–87, 392 Martin, A., 28, 480 Marx, K., 13, 42, 351, 360 Marxism, 11, 257, 365, 412, 421, 434, 445, 446, 448–49, 481, 526 Marxism, inversion of, 447–48 Marxism and power, 446, 447 Massim, 526 Material culture, 3, 370–72 Material livelihoods, 13 Materialistic assumptions, 352, 449 Matthews, P. J., 435 Mauss, M., 6, 44, 47, 72, 82, 407, 410, 412, 413, 421, 442, 444 Maximization, 41, 254–55, 369, 373, 407–8, 423–24, 451 McAlpine, J. R., 19 McClintock, M., 229 McDowell, N., 83, 324, 446 McKellin, W. H., 457 McRae, S. G., 211 Mead, M., 67

569

Means and ends, 28 Medical services, population impacts, 224, 233 Megapode, 384 Meggitt, M. J., 44, 79, 112, 247, 248, 458 Melanesia, definition of, 67, 497 Melanesian individual, 39–44, 169, 459, 461, 475, 476, 490, 492, 494. See also Individual Melpa, 78, 386, 391, 490, 493, 499, 521, 528 Men, as transactors, 437 Men’s fears of female pollution, 224–25, 518 Mendi, 19, 46, 70, 222, 241, 336, 339, 419, 469, 473, 492, 498 Menken, J., 236 Merlan, F., 44, 86, 112 Metaphor, use in spells, 391 Microdemography, 216–17 Miedema, J., 122, 123 Migration, 117, 239–42, 250, 511 Migration, for employment, 241–42 Migration statistics, 239 Mines, 447, 457–58, 459–60 Mines, royalties, 459–60, 464 Missionaries, 323, 324, 337, 338, 340, 360, 465, 468, 497, 520, 523. See also Christianity Mixed vegetable gardens, 16–17, 92, 150, 189, 273, 502, 503 Mixed vegetable gardens, distance, 131 Mixed vegetable gardens, enclosure, 142–43 Modjeska, N., 164, 257, 329, 361 Moka exchange, 51 Moles, D. J., 378 Mondragón, C., 338 Money, 27, 322–23, 405, 408, 418, 419, 422, 423, 440–41, 463, 489. See also Cash Money, absence of, 369 Money, defining the economy, 366–67 Moon, 390 Moon, phases of, 337–38, 520 Moral person, 82 Morality, 37, 500 Morawetz, D., 459 Morren, G. E. B., 377, 395, 396 Morris, B., 34, 111 Mortuary exchange, 81 Muller Ranges, 239, 243 Munn, N., 339, 340 Murdock, G. P., 50 Mursi, 520 Mythical time, 339, 519 Nash, J. M., 28, 234 National Research Institute (NRI), 245 Natural resources management, 93 Neighborhood, 71, 499

570

INDEX

Neill, A. S., 42, 476 Nembi Plateau, 139, 176, 187, 204, 220, 221, 223, 227, 242, 244, 248, 249, 508, 512 Nembi Valley, 222, 429, 447, 492, 498, 512 New Britain, 507 New Georgia, 516, 523 New Guinea eagle, 383 “New” Melanesian ethnography, 47–48, 494 Nigeria, 508 Nihil, M. W., 80, 377, 447 Nipa, 19, 70, 512 Non-farmed food sources, 206 Norman, M. J. T., 318 Normative approaches, 4–5, 51–52, 95, 407, 408, 491, 492 Normative person, 44, 368 Normative person versus maneuvering individual, 95 Nualu, 134 Nye, P. H., 298 Obrero, F., 378 Occupational division of labor, 12, 26, 330, 365, 409, 460–61 Official census data, discrepancies, 507–8, 512 O’Hanlon, M., 46 Ohtsuka, R., 199, 200, 207, 212, 214, 241, 249, 341, 349 Ok, 377, 380, 383, 395, 396, 491, 523 Ok Tedi, 250 Ol howma, 24, 79, 80, 96, 119–21, 136, 155, 160, 164, 187, 189–91, 258, 269, 291, 356, 401, 427–28, 437, 448, 478, 501–2 Ol howma, as industrious persons, 356 Oliver, D. L., 79 Olson, M., 60, 92 Onabasulu, 458 Onwueme, I. C., 377 Ooka, J. J., 389 Open field system, 93–94 Opportunity cost, 255, 373, 398 Oral history, 97 Origin myths (ol maerizor injiy), 86–87 Original affluent society, 1, 3, 171–72, 418, 419, 504 Original affluent society, critique of, 173–74 Orokaiva, 67, 349, 360, 364, 377, 380, 389, 394, 489, 497, 519 Orren, G. R., 58 Ossuary, 212–13 Ostrom, E., 88, 89, 91, 94, 98, 111, 458 Other-interested individual, 56–84, 135, 304 Outsider intellectual distortion, 472

Palm tree, 383, 384 Palsson, G., 122 Pandanus, 254–57, 370–71, 381–82, 388, 435 Panoff, M., 95, 112, 363 Papuan Plateau, 220, 243, 286, 511, 520 Pareto, V., 58 “Partible person,” 47, 71, 444, 476 Participant-observation, 258, 279, 283, 468 Participation, impracticability of, 128 Participatory approaches, 468, 469 Participatory development, 463, 466 Pataki-Schweizer, K. J., 40, 187 Paternal/agnatic land preference, 112, 116 Paternity, 230 Patrifilial bias, 87, 112, 116, 268, 401. See also Cumulative patrifiliation Pearson, H. W., 435 Peña, R. S. de la, 378 Person, 34, 60, 442, 490, 491, 500 Pests, 314, 379, 381, 388, 395, 522 Pig herding, 166, 204 Pig herds, size of, 195–96 Pig kill festivals, 43 Pigeons, 384 Pigs, 42, 43, 166, 195–96, 205, 218, 308, 430–31, 434, 436, 443–44, 449, 492, 512, 514, 526 Pigs, population, 197, 506 Pigs, rearing of, 430–31 Planting crops, See Crops Planting stock, 305–7 Platteau, J. P., 93, 95, 98 Ploeg, A., 40, 67 Plucknett, D. L., 378 Polanyi, K., 170, 174, 406 Policy issues, 238, 242 Political economy, 13–14 Pollarded trees as firewood, 291 Pollarding trees, 291–92 Polygynous households, 191, 195 Polygyny, 221, 225, 227–30, 258, 509–10, 525 Polygyny, depressing birthrate, 227–30 Polygyny and birth control, 229 Popenoe, H.L., 298 Population, 8, 197, 215, 216–43 Population, previous decline, 512 Population database, 219 Population expansion, local awareness of, 244 Population growth, 242–43, 511–12 Population growth, resource implications, 250–51 Population pyramids, 220–22 Population surveys, problems with, 217–19 Port Moresby, 250, 467

INDEX

571

Posey, D. A., 298 Pospisil, L., 1, 30, 40, 129, 144, 155, 187, 318, 405, 414, 438 Possum-teeth beard pins, 431–32 Postmodernism, 6, 470, 470, 472, 474, 488, 505 Postpartum taboo, 224–25 Pottier, J., 237 Pouwer, J., 112 Powell, J., 15 Premonitions of disaster, 340 Prestation, 524 Price, 414, 415, 422, 423 Primitive communism, 449 Prisoner’s dilemma, 72–73 Prize pearl shell, 526 Produce, sharing of, 312 Production, restriction of, 404 Production versus transaction, 364, 437 Production-transaction insulation, 164, 438–40, 442, 477–78 Profit, 428–29 Profit, absence of, 237, 245 Proletariat, 445 Promiscuity, 231–32, 506 Proximate determinants of fertility, 227–28 Psychology, 44, 528 Purchase, 409 Purchase, terms for, 425

Residence arrangements, 224–225, 323, 499 Residence choices, 112–13 Residence and cultivated land, 112–13 Residential mobility, 117–18 Resource availability issues, 173 Revenge, logic of, 75–76, 452 Ricardo, D., 27, 351 Richards, P., 15, 127, 312 Rimoldi, M., 457 Ringbarking trees, 291–92, 293 Robbins, J., 68 Robbins, L., 28, 254, 365, 367 Robbins, S., 46 Rodman, M. C., 88 Rosenberg, J. D., 446 Rossel Island, 405 Rotational factor (R), 200 Roth, M., 456 Rousseau, J. J., 60 Rowley-Conwy, P., 171 Rule, J., 70 Rumsey, A., 44, 86, 112 Ruskin, J., 445, 446 Russell, B., 68 Ruthenberg, H., 200, 318 Rutz, H., 457 Rwanda, 177, 505 Ryan, D., 23, 44, 80, 179, 336, 339, 377, 469, 473

Radcliffe-Brown, A. R., 476 Ramakrishnan, P. S., 298 Rappaport, R. A., 15, 198, 200, 205, 211, 212, 214, 234, 324, 389 Rational actor, 56 Rational choice school, 492 Rats, 314, 379, 381, 388 Ray, I., 91, 111, 458 Read, D. W., 215 Read, K. E., 33, 40, 47 Reaganonomics, 33 Reciprocal maximization, 41 Reciprocity, 12, 29, 64, 82, 406, 413, 462, 520, 523–24 Reciprocity, as moral force, 82 Redistribution, 42, 405, 427–28 Relational-individual, 41 Relationality, 68, 492 Reparation exchange, 81, 452 Research plans, 8 Residence, dual (suw pa kab), 207, 218, 219, 240 Residence, patrifilial bias, 219, 268. See also Patrifilial bias Residence, problems defining, 217–19

Sa exchange, 30 Sack, P., 457 Sago, 436, 525 Sahlins, M., 1, 7, 44, 79, 171, 172, 406, 417, 428 Sale of crop areas, 189 Salisbury, R., 67, 319, 321, 324, 327, 330, 335, 438 Salt, 387, 523 Salvage anthropology, 321 Salzman, P. C., 24, 38, 49, 437, 470–71 Sampling issues, 4–5 Sanchez, P. A., 298 Sapir Whorf hypothesis, 354 Say, J-B., 368 Scaglion, R., 229 Scarcity, xviii, 1, 7, 27–28, 125, 126, 169, 172, 237, 243, 253, 257, 354, 373–74, 407, 417, 419, 421, 439, 448, 458, 477, 505 Scarcity, as cultural construct, 172, 173, 418 Scarcity, ecological, 173, 175 Scarcity, of exchangeables, 419 Scarcity, of raw materials, 244 Scarcity, Wola concepts of, 420 Scheper-Hughes, N., 324

572

INDEX

Schieffelin, E. L., 285 Schlager, E., 88, 89 Schneider, H. K., 170 Schwimmer, E, 360, 377 Scott, M. W., 47 Seashells, import of, 524 Seasons, 338, 520 Seavoy, R. E., 144 Secondary regrowth, areas of, 176 Secondary regrowth, clearance of, 160 Segmentary agnatic descent, 45–46, 112–16, 247–48, 452, 457–58, 473, 476, 492, 501, 527 Self-interest, 2, 35, 39, 56, 60–61, 63–65, 73, 78, 500 Self-interest serving community interest, 60–61 Self-interested individual, 26–55, 124, 169, 373, 374, 407, 442, 451, 460, 475. See also Individual Self-interested model, inadequacies, 57–58 Selfish-generous individual, 64 Self-regarding co-operation, 60 Self-regarding versus other-regarding individuals, 58 Sem, 70, 71, 80, 85, 86, 94, 110, 111–18, 121, 124, 163, 207, 217, 219, 238, 401, 456, 459, 498–99, 500 Semgenk, 23, 70, 87, 89, 90, 112–16, 129 Semicontinous cultivation, 295 Semonda, 23, 70, 87, 129 Sen, A. K., 30, 56, 57, 61, 237 Sense of place, 116–19, 501 Sepik, 339 Set of all sets paradox, 68–69, 498 Set theory, 497, 498 Set theory, related to society, 68–69 Sexual division of labor, 18, 257, 327–28, 353– 54, 365, 437, 449, 460, 461 Sexual relations, 228–29 Shaffner, J., 47 Shakespeare, William, 340 Sharp, C., 254, 368 Shifting cultivation, 14, 16, 18, 489 Siane, 67, 319, 320, 321, 438 Sillitoe, J., 452, 469 Sillitoe, P., 3, 10, 12, 15, 16, 19, 23, 24, 26, 30, 33, 40–42, 46, 49, 52, 54, 57, 58, 63, 65, 66, 70, 78, 80, 85, 97, 111–12, 117, 121, 123, 127, 129, 134, 139, 144, 146, 149, 155, 160, 166, 171, 176, 195, 197, 199, 200, 203–7, 210, 211, 224, 234, 243, 244, 246, 247, 248, 249, 251, 257, 259, 271, 278, 279, 281, 286, 287, 295– 96, 297–98, 302, 305, 312–14, 318–19, 322– 25, 329, 337–40, 348, 352, 355, 377, 379, 380,

381, 388, 394, 395, 396, 398, 401, 405, 408, 413, 414, 417–19, 423, 425, 427–29, 431, 432, 435–37, 439, 440, 443, 445, 448, 449, 451, 452, 456, 463, 466, 468, 469, 471, 475 Simbu, 96, 129, 134, 139, 148, 151, 187, 216, 220, 224, 240, 248, 505, 507, 508, 509, 510, 511, 512 Simon, H., 167 Simpson, S. R., 457 Siuai, 79 Skill versus verbal knowledge, 127–28 Smelser, N.J., 455 Smith, Adam, 12, 26, 27, 34, 56, 57, 61, 83, 173, 198, 351, 364, 365, 418, 452, 461 Smith, R. M., 66, 323 Smith, V., 83, 167 Smouse, P.E., 233 Social agent, 52–53, 60, 491 Social and economic accumulation, 436 Social and economic transactions, switching between, 425–26, 427 Social capital, 464, 522 Social change, 53, 322, 340, 396, 452–53, 455 Social co-operation, 62–63 Social evolution, 489, 490, 495, 496, 497 Social exchange, 407–9, 423 Social exchange theory, 38, 373–74, 421, 446, 451–52 Social exchange, as profitable behavior, 38, 373–74 Social networks, 71–72, 78–79, 123, 452 Social order, exchange constituting, 363 Social process, 52–53, 60, 122, 376, 452, 476 Social reproduction, 322, 363, 501 Social robots, 64, 496 Social status and assistance with clearing gardens, 269–70 Social status and distance to gardens, 136–39 Social status and garden enclosure, 144–45 Social status and garden site selection, 164 Social status and garden site topography, 155–58 Social status and garden site vegetation, 160, 162 Social transaction, 80–81 Social universe, 71, 499, 511 Social/collective values, 62 Societies/cultures, naming of, 66–67, 70 Society, avoiding reification of, 67–68 Society, notional, 65–72, 363, 496 Society, problems defining, 67–70, 498 Society as shared values, 69–70 Sociological jargon, 68 Sociology, 321 Sociopolitical exchange, xviii, 23–24, 46, 123–

INDEX 24, 347, 362–64, 397, 399–404, 408, 409, 413, 423, 424, 449–50, 451–52, 462, 477, 525. See also Exchange Sociopolitical exchange, as conservative force, 452–53 Sociopolitical exchange, as work, 361 Sociopolitical exchange, time spent on, 376–77 Soil, 21, 148, 151, 295, 296, 298–99, 301, 305, 306, 377–78, 383, 484, 503, 513, 515, 516, 517, 522 Soil erosion, 148–49, 271, 285, 289, 301, 503, 516, 517 Solomon Islands, 395 Solway, J., 1, 171 Southern Highlands Rural Development Project, 464–65 Special-purpose money, 441 Spell words, 388–89 Spells, for taro, 380–91 Spells, mutable nature of, 386 Spells, power of, 391 Spheres of exchange, 437–39, 525 Spheres of production, 438–40 Spillius, J., 216 Spiral time, 340, 452 Spirits (towmow), 32–33, 117, 217, 392, 443 Spriggs, M., 378, 394 Stanhope, J. M., 221 State, collapse of, 448, 455, 468 Stateless orders compared with states, 35, 122, 323 Stateless politics, 121–25, 450, 474–76. See Acephalous order States, origin of, 435–36 Status issues, 60–61 Steel axes, maintenance of, 325–27 Steel tools, 262, 263–64 Steensberg, A., 299, 324 Stent, W. R., 3, 171, 361 Stewart, P. J., 41, 47, 51, 61, 62, 63, 68, 86, 112, 379, 394, 457 Stone and steel tools, 247, 259, 275, 324–327, 514, 518 Stone and steel tools, comparison of techniques, 279–81, 288, 292–93 Stone and steel tools, differences in efficiencies, 325 Stone and steel tools, time comparisons, 262– 263, 266, 278, 281–82, 288, 292–93, 319–21, 324–27 Stone ax, 262, 265–66, 512 Stone axes, maintenance of, 325–27 Strathern, A. J., 41, 46, 47, 51, 61, 62, 63, 67, 68,

573

78, 79, 82, 86, 110, 112, 122, 164, 324, 379, 386, 391, 394, 457, 458 Strathern, A. M., 10, 24, 31, 33, 34, 40, 44, 47, 62, 65, 66, 67, 79, 80, 82, 86, 257, 329, 354, 386, 391, 410, 437, 442, 474 Street, J., 203, 212 Structural-functionalism, 493, 527 Structuralism, 451, 455, 502, 527 Stürzenhofecker, G., 122 Subsistence, 3, 13, 14, 41–42, 448, 526 Subsistence and exchange domains, relation between, 424–41, 448 Substantive economic view, 170–73 Substantivism, 11, 27, 84, 169–171, 251, 367, 406, 413, 421, 422, 480, 481, 488–89, 494 Substantivism, critiques of, 174 Substantivism, defined, 170, 174 Substantivism equated with subsistence, 174 Substantivism/formalism debate, 175 Sugarcane, 381, 387, 389, 398 Summer Institute of Linguistics, 498 Supernatural beliefs, 24 Supply and demand, 479 Surplus, 237, 251, 399, 423, 434–36, 492, 507 Surplus, control of and power, 435–36 Sustainability, 93 Sweet potato gardens, 16–17, 92, 151, 189 Sweet potato mound building, 308–10 Sweet potato mounds, 516 Sweet potato replacing taro, 395–96, 523 Swidden, See Garden Symbolic time, 339 Sympathetic magic, 391 Taboos, 224–25, 378–80, 389, 501 Tabubil, 250 Tacit knowledge, 15, 127–28, 135, 165, 204, 245, 258, 262, 312, 380, 389, 446, 473, 502 Tairora, 52, 349 Takwi valley, 224, 228, 510 Tallensi, 39 Tambu, 441, 525 Tambul, 318, 523 Tari, 149, 216, 218, 221, 223, 224, 231, 233, 234, 241, 242, 248, 335, 341, 508, 510, 511, 512, 524 Taro, 377–404, 435, 517, 523 Taro, labor demands, 395 Taro, organoleptic qualities, 383, 385, 386 Taro, planting of, 380–82, 388 Taro cultivars, 379, 381, 384, 386, 387, 388, 395 Taro exchange, 399–404, 415–16 Taro gardens, 16–17, 92, 146–47, 150, 273, 377, 378, 379, 399

574

INDEX

Taro gardens, distance to, 131–34 Taro gardens, enclosure of, 142–43 Taro gardens, site characteristics of, 131 Taro harvesting, 399–400 Taro in prehistory, 394–95, 398 Taro taboos, 378–80, 389 Tasks, vocabulary for, 355 Tauna-Awa, 511 Tax, S., 28 Technological unemployment, 319–21 Tekhne, 502 Terms, problems with, 10 Testart, A., 435 Theoretical eclecticism, 4–6 Theory, 3–6, 469, 493 Thiagalingam, K., 155 Thomas, B., 467 Thomas, N., 321, 443 Thoughts (konem), 32–33 Thurnwald, R., 11, 352 Tiffany, S. W., 98, 112 Tikopia, 28, 434, 438, 508, 521 Time, attitudes towards, 341, 418 Time, concepts of, 336–41, 396–97, 519–20 Time, relativity of scarcity, 374 Time, scarcity of, 253–58, 269, 340–41, 364 Time and motion study, 259–61 Time budget data, comparisons with elsewhere, 318–319, 349 Time budget data, shortcomings in, 334–35 Time expenditure survey, methods, 331–35 Time spent burning vegetation, 300–301 Time spent clearing a garden, 262–63 Time spent digging ditch, 285 Time spent enclosing a garden, 274 Time spent erecting fence, 282–84 Time spent gardening, totals, 317–18, 518–19 Time spent harvesting, 314–16 Time spent on gardening tasks (per ha), 315–17 Time spent planting crops, 303, 305, 309–10 Time spent pulling up vegetation, 297 Time spent splitting fence stakes, 278 Time spent weeding, 314 Time survey data, 341–51, 486 Time-utilitarianism, 368–73 Time vocabulary, 336, 338 Tiv, 438 Tolai, 224, 405, 441 Topography, 19–21, 211 Torres Straits, 4 Townsend, C. R., 198, 324 Trade, 428–29, 438 Trade, balance of, 429–30

Tragedy of the commons, 93–94, 245, 246, 248 Transactables, 410. See Exchangeables Transaction, 29, 375 Transactionalsim, 407, 481, 491 Transformation payments (hentiya), 439–40, 526 Translation, problems with, 10, 390, 413, 422, 425, 474, 488 Trebilcock, M., 456 Tree felling, 275 Tree ferns, 387, 392 Trobriand Islands, 6, 39, 66, 381, 406, 438, 440, 525 Tsembaga, 212 Tumu, A., 44 Uberoi, J. P. Singh, 64, 405 Ulélé, 318 Umeda, 520 Umezaki, M., 241, 242, 248, 335, 341, 349 Unconscious, collective, 450 Unconscious, personal, 450 Ungutip, W., 340 Unilineal descent, See Segmentary agnatic descent Uphoff, N., 56, 58 “User-makes” principle, 244, 417 Usurufa, 511 Utility, 255, 496 Utility maximization, 166. See also Maximization Valencia, M. J., 67 Valeri, V., 110 Valuables, 410. See also Exchangeables Value, according to comparative utility, 414–15 Value, assessment of, 413–15 Value, socially founded, 414, 415, 423 Values, historical rootedness of, 322–24 Variable individual, 51–52, 111, 103, 123, 128, 165, 167, 204, 356 Variable preferences, 167, 495 Vegetable marketing, 466–67 Vegetation, 22, 484, 503 Vegetation, drying of, 286, 287–88, 291, 296 Vegetation, pulling up, 296 Vial, J., 228 Village courts, 74–75 Violence, 24, 75–77, 324, 361–62, 475 Violent death statistics, 511 Violent deaths, impact on population growth, 239 Vlassak, V., 15

INDEX Wabag, 240, 512 Wabis, B., 340 Waddell, E. W., 15, 129, 148, 199, 324, 339, 349, 364 Wage, 512 Wagner, R., 9–10, 41, 46, 47, 48, 65, 77, 354, 363 Wahgi valley, 220, 221, 222, 233, 509, 512 Walker, J., 31, 419 Wallman, S., 374, 446 Walter, M., 457 Ward, R. G., 222, 241, 457, 458 Wardlow, H., 231, 232 Was valley, 19 Watkins, S. C., 236 Watson, J. B., 52, 330, 394 Wealth, 409. See also Exchangeables Webb, L. R., 3, 171, 361 Webster, C. C., 296 Webster, R., 176, 181 Wedding cake analogy, 444 Wedges, use in splitting tree trunks, 278 Weeding, 313–14, 318 Weekdays, 520 Weiner, A. B., 411, 442 Welfare economics, 58 Western individual, 492–93 White, J. P., 212, 234, 394 Why versus how accounts, 69 Wiessner, P., 44, 324 Wildlife, 22 Wilk, R. R., 11 Williams, F. E., 67, 70, 179, 322, 377, 380, 389, 394, 419 Wilson, P. N., 296

575

Winefield, G., 216, 220, 221, 224, 238 Wittfogel, K. A., 436 Wohlt, P. B., 46, 199, 211, 214, 221, 233, 235, 247 Wola region, 19–22 Wola social order, 72–80 Wola society/culture, definition of, 66, 70, 498 Wolaland Interactive, 181, 220, 243 Women, as producers, 437 Women’s garden areas (tenon tomb), 207, 210, 258, 304–5, 415 Women’s influence, 347–48, 354 Women’s views of men’s behavior, 362–63 Wood, A. W., 148, 248 Wood, J. W., 224, 225, 228, 230, 233 Wood index, 266, 514 Woodburn, J., 48, 434 Woodward, K., 116, 119 Work, definition of, 351–52, 354, 355, 356–59, 363–64, 397, 521 Work, introduced concept, 356–60 Work-bee organization, 289–91, 304, 312–13, 460 World Bank, 464 Yala, C., 456, 457, 459 Yam exchange (urigubu), 39 Yamauchi, T., 341, 349 Yen, D. E., 394 Young, T., 1, 14, 253, 480 Zipf, G. K., 396, 397 Zorn, J. G., 98, 458 Zubrow, E. B. W., 214