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Intensification, Complexity and Evolution: Insights from the Strickland‐Bosavi Region
Author(s) -
Minnegal Monica,
Dwyer Peter D.
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
asia pacific viewpoint
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.571
H-Index - 38
eISSN - 1467-8373
pISSN - 1360-7456
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8373.00149
Subject(s) - new guinea , adaptation (eye) , transformation (genetics) , agriculture , economic geography , sociology , geography , ethnology , biology , archaeology , biochemistry , neuroscience , gene
Agricultural systems must be understood as embedded within the total socio‐cultural system of which they are a part. Difference in the intensity of those systems is, therefore, but one aspect of difference in the complexity of the total systems. Processes of intensification and innovation that are implicated in change to agricultural systems are, similarly, instances of more general processes of adaptation and transformation which underwrite change in complex systems. These considerations inform understanding of differences between, and change within, non‐hierarchical and communally organised societies of the interior lowlands of Papua New Guinea. With a focus on two societies of the Strickland‐Bosavi region of Papua New Guinea this paper locates considerations of agricultural intensity and intensification within the broader contexts of socio‐cultural complexity and processes of adaptation and transformation.