Academic literature on the topic 'Massim (Papua New Guinean people) – Social life and customs'

Gardens of Basima is an anthropological study of a previously undescribed village society in eastern Fergusson Island, Milne Bay Province, Papua New Guinea. The thesis is therefore a contribution to the ethnographic map of the Massim. It focuses particularly on the social organisation, land tenure, and complex mortuary exchanges of Basima, a matrilineal society with many social and cultural institutions in common with its more famous and powerful Dobuan neighbours. The people of Basima are locally renown for their betelnut, their pigs, and the products of their yam gardens, for which traders from other islands come to barter. However, despite their location on an important Kula trade route between the Amphletts Islands and the Dobu area, Basima people are only very marginally involved in ceremonial Kula exchanges. The main contention of this thesis is that, being a society composed largely of immigrant matrilineal descent groups, Basima displays a less 'uncompromising' form of matriliny than had been described for other societies in the region. Structurally, it is highly adaptable. As manifested in clan and matrilineage membership, in patterns of settlement, in marriage and post-marital residence, and not least, as manifested in the man-land relationships of land tenure, the flexibility of Basima society is evident. This is by no means a recent phenomenon indicating a 'breakdown' of some ideal system, but rather an integral property of an adaptive system which loosely unifies a diverse collection of immigrant groups. An important focus of the thesis is the obligatory and optional mortuary feasts and exchanges (principally bwabwale and sagali) so common in the matrilineal Massim. While Basima variants of these feasts show structural similarities to those of their neighbours they also reveal some significant differences. Notwithstanding an ostensible sequential ordering of such feasts, Basima people see them as discrete events motivated and staged by their performers to achieve primarily secular objectives. Sagali in particular, while nominally a feast that honours the collective dead, is sponsored principally by men to achieve renown. In other words, the main premise of sagali is political not eschatological. Likewise, the principles of Basima of customary land tenure are ultimately subject to political manipulation.

In this thesis I explore the recent historical development of Saluan culture. I begin by arguing that the sphere of cultural phenomena must not be regarded as a coherent unity. Instead, several domains of loosely interrelated institutions and idioms may be distinguished. Although the domains - as fields of meaning - are defined in contrast to each other, there exists no necessary logical or functional relation between them. The particular configuration of cultural domains is the result of a society's specific history, in which non-cultural factors play a major role. The three dominant cultural domains of contemporary Saluan society are gavman (institutions and concepts pertaining to Western type government, education and development), lotu (institutions and symbols of the Christian churches) and kastam (cultural entities which are regarded as belonging to tradition). These domains are evident in the cultural practice of Saluan people as well as in their discourse. Saluan Islanders refer to them as different 'ways of doing things'. In the thesis I am concerned with the genesis of these three cultural domains in the colonial history of Saluan Island. My focus is on kastam which was first developed as a negative category through the comparison of Western and indigenous cultures. Since the 1960s a remarkable revaluation of tradition has taken place. Throughout the thesis I endeavour to link cultural changes to other developments of a political, economic and demographic nature. In addition, I pay attention to the way in which individuals contributed to the social and cultural changes through their conceptual and practical innovations. An important source for my reconstruction of the Saluan past is the oral tradition maintained by the islanders. I try to convey some of the richness and diversity of this tradition, while at the same time investigating its relation to the three cultural domains discerned. In the conclusion I try to clarity the theoretical conceptions that have informed my analysis and presentation of data.

This study examines the interaction between the politics of a Papua New Guinea Highlands society, the Simbu, and the colonially introduced state. It does so by analysing patterns of political competition in a study of dynamic change in four major stages, the precolonial, the colonial, decolonizing and post-colonial periods. In order to analyse this interaction, it seeks to answer the basic questions about politics - how people gain power and become politicians, how they maintain power once they have it, and whether the answers to these questions have differed in these time periods. In particular, it examines the extent to which indigenous social structures, ideologies and political techniques are used in the new state structures, and thus the degree to which the introduced institutions have been adapted by the Simbu. The interaction between indigenous, precolonial institutions and the state and its conventions are revealed by a study of the ideologies used in the Simbu political world. In the different political arenas which existed in the different time periods quite distinct talents have been displayed and appeals made. The Simbu ideologies of the solidarity of clans which have strong, hereditary leaders are used selectively according to the context. The aggressive battlefield leader of precolonial times was not appropriate in the enforced peace of the colonial era, but was revived in the insecure period of decolonization. Ideologies of the manipulation of wealth being the basis for prestige, power and influence were expanded upon in the colonial context, and have been further adapted in the post-colonial context to justify the use of massive financial and other resources in attempting to build personalised followings on a large scale. The ideology of the leader as a man of knowledge is also claimed by some. All these claims have at different times had some appeal and contributed to the search for bases of power, but no single model of Simbu leadership and society is applicable. The elements of this variety of political models can be found in the adaptivity of Simbu tradition. Simbu ideologies of solidarity are regularly expressed in bloc voting patterns by clans, tribes and sometimes whole language groups, and in the clan warfare which resumed in the late colonial period. The techniques and strategies of precolonial leadership, of the leader using resources from one sphere in another and gaining prestige from this interstitial role, are reinvented in many contexts in the contemporary state of PNG. These processes are demonstrated in numerous case studies of the transitional politics from precolonial Simbu to the contemporary period, with particular focus on the decade straddling the Independence of Papua New Guinea, and the creation of an elected provincial government. Political competition and voter responses are analysed in the context of three national and one provincial election, and the struggles for control of the area's coffee industry. Despite the different scale of the political arenas explored in different time periods, and the rapid increases in the political resources available, the political techniques and stategies of Simbu remained essentially the same* There are also continuities in political beliefs and the range of concepts found within Simbu's variegated political models. Despite the political changes, there has been continuity in Simbu's political culture. Simbu values have been used within the introduced state, just as resources from the state have been used within indigenous structures competition and conflicts. The process is thus one of interpenetration, with the state co-opted into Simbu political competition.