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Women, Pigs, God and Evolution: Social and Economic Change Among Kubo People of Papua New Guinea
Author(s) -
Minnegal Monica,
Dwyer Peter D.
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
oceania
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.356
H-Index - 25
eISSN - 1834-4461
pISSN - 0029-8077
DOI - 10.1002/j.1834-4461.1997.tb02641.x
Subject(s) - reification (marxism) , new guinea , commensurability (mathematics) , sociology , cult , social change , relations of production , gender studies , economic geography , development economics , political economy , political science , geography , production (economics) , ethnology , economics , law , geometry , mathematics , politics , macroeconomics
This paper depicts connections and interactions between several apparently disparate themes of change observed in recent years at a village in the interior lowlands of Western Province, Papua New Guinea. Changes in patterns of association between men and women can be traced, in the first instance, to altered management practices necessitated by intensified pig production. That intensification, in turn, reflects the growing importance of money in the local economy, a shift which, through its predication on recognising the commensurability of differences, has ramifications far beyond the economics of pig production. An earlier emphasis on equivalence in exchanges has been replaced by a recognition of substitutability, with a consequent reification of categories at the expense of individuality. This trend has been reinforced by the influence of a new Christian cult that, in emphasising the distinction between men and women, has reified gender categories as a basis for structuring social action. The declining association between men and women which emerged as an adaptive response to changing economic realities has thus become incorporated as a structural transformation in Kubo social life.