Sharing bodies, persons, and currencies : traditional and state-issued currencies of tolai on the Gazelle Peninsula, Papua New Guinea

Abstract

In this thesis I examine the local notions of indigenous shell (tabu) and state-issued currencies used by Tolai people of Gazelle Peninsula, East New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea. Following the general viewpoint of the New Melanesian Ethnography as inspired by Marilyn Strathem and Roy Wagner among others, the thesis aims to demonstrate how we can describe, analyse, and understand the relational dimensions of traditional and introduced currencies in terms which are consonant with recent accounts of the sort of 'dividual' personhood that is reportedly distinctive to Melanesia. In Chapter I, I outline Tolai understandings of personhood with respect to the 'traditional' system of social organisation and kinship, focusing upon indigenous conceptualisations of the body. In Chapter 2, I describe how this symbolisation of relations and the body is for villagers a significant aspect also of tabu, providing its conceptual background: its various meanings, mythical understandings, and subunit classification as well shaping the processes of production, exchange, and accumulation in which it has been deployed. In Chapters 3-6, I argue that the indigenous version of dividual personhood has played a key role in the Tolai history of currency utilisation and in the local organization, operation and transformation of various exchange spheres ('barter', 'purchase', 'hire', and 'secular' and 'ceremonial sharing') consequent to the villagers' entry into new relations non-Tolai persons, to the issuing of state currencies, and the introduction of imported commodities.