Production among the Duna : aspects of horticultural intensification in central New Guinea

Abstract

The thesis opens with a description of Duna country and the Duna people. Part One places country and people within the larger contexts of central New Guinea (pre)history and ethnography. A problem appears: to understand the ethnographic present as an instance in a movement of history. A theoretical tension is suggested between materialistic and idealistic/mentalistic approaches to the problem. An ethnographic sequence from central New Guinea is investigated, and conditions of production, reproduction, and transformation relevant to the sequence are considered. The first part of the thesis offers analogies between history and ethnography mediated by the notion of the intensification of production. It is suggested that the rationale for increased production may rest upon a symbolic displacement whereby products of labour are seen by people as if equivalent to humans themselves, for the purposes of social exchange. Part Two displays the factors and forces of production in the ethnographic present of Duna country. "Ground", "homestead", and "garden" are presented as the ethnographic correlates of the traditionally recognized factors of production: land, labour, and capital. The level of the forces of production is represented as the level of surplus horticultural production, considered as production for the maintenance of pigs. The question of the rationality of Duna pig production is raised. Part Three describes the social relations that Duna enter into for production. It is proposed that production among the Duna is a realization of an exploitative mode of relationship) between men and women. An attempt is made to demonstrate this exploitation within a system of joint labour and ownership, on the basis of time and energy expenditure in production. It is concluded that women are exploited of their time although apparently not of their energy. Time can be falsely appropriated in part because consciousness of it is imperfect; a consequence of this exploitation is the reproduction of male dominance in the structure of social relations. The thesis concludes with an outline of Duna political and religious institutions in their articulation with production. For Duna, the maintenance of peace, the conduct of war, and the observance of rituals all provide reasons for pig production, while at the same time they depend upon existing relations of production for their continued being. Within this circular rationality an opposition appears betv/een the use-value of pigs for eating and their social exchange-value in creating and maintaining the structure of male-biased relationships. A concluding review of the Kiiria Pul u cult, the rituals for which are absent within the ethnographic present, suggests that the future movement of history among the Duna lay in the direction of elaboration and regional co-ordination of male relations of dominance. These developments could lead to a consolidation of sex-based relations of exploitation and thereby to a further intensification of production, but initially it seems that social transformation is realized primarily within ritual rather than in actual political economy. Show more