Change Among the Duna: A Synopsis and Some Wider Implications

Abstract

Models of recent historical change among local populations in Papua New Guinea have themselves been changing over the last decade. Some earlier studies tended to suggest that these societies were preadapted to capitalist-style economic development (Finney 1973). Later, when economic and political instabilities brought with them bouts of renewed intergroup fighting, analysts discussed the emergence of class-based inequalities and their intersection with the resurgence of tribal animosities (Amarshi, Good and Mortimer 1979). Finally, when most of the societies had been subjected to radical changes, some ethnographers retreated to the level of reconstructed models of “Melanesian sociality,” seen as the opposite of “Western individualism,” and then proceeded to trace the emergence of individualism as a product of capitalist hegemony or domination. This historical progression can be seen as involving a complete volte face with regard to the supposed basic characteristics of the societies in question: from being seen as “pre-adapted” to capitalism to being constructed as antithetical to it.