探访世界最后的疯狂部落（三）Seeing like an anthropologist（3）

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探访世界最后的疯狂部落（三）Seeing like an anthropologist（3）

Steve Grimwade 
But that is the luck of the draw…it is where your gas lies. Except I'm interest also in what that means for thegroupings. Is there dissatisfaction, is there angst, is there - are thesegroups breaking down?…it is where your gas lies. Except I'm interest also in what that means for thegroupings. Is there dissatisfaction, is there angst, is there - are thesegroups breaking down?

Monica Minnegal 
There are some important shifts, and one is in a sense that they become moresolid in terms of structure. So the government forms require that you identifythe head of the household and the wife of the head and the children of. So atone level those sorts of structures become stronger. The forms require that youidentify a chairman for your land group, and a secretary, and a - so thosesorts of structures are new. 

But there are also reallycrucial differences. Things that change. One has to do with it's the youngpeople who know how to engage with this stuff. The elders haven't been toschool, the elders don't know how to read and write. They're now dependent onthe knowledge that the young bring. That immediately overthrows some principlesof, where does authority, where does prestige come from? How can you guide theyoung when you're so deeply dependent on them and they know it? 

So you do get a breakdown ofthose sorts of hierarchies. You do get frustrated young people who are turningto things like guns. Not so much in the area where I work, but in Hela provincewhich is just over the hill where the biggest part of the project is currentlyoperating. There's a massive amount of tribal fighting. Now it's done not withbows and arrows but with AK-47s. A lot of that is driven by a sense of, wemissed out. Really, really we were connected to that place. Remember I said thatpeople - the connections were fluid. Everyone in a sense could build aconnection. But now there's - they're being told, no, you don't have aconnection to this place. So there's endless court cases going on that requirepeople to say, I'm the true landowner, you're not the true landowner.

Steve Grimwade 
Monica, you've travelled to PNG to live with the Kubo people and others foralmost 20 years. You've lived with them for months if not years at a time. Sogiven your knowledge and your understanding of the impact on these people, whatdo you hope the impact of your work is?

Monica Minnegal 
Part of it - I definitely make sure that all of my material goes back to thepeople. I talk to them about it as well. I'm hoping to some extent that ithelps them understand what they are doing to themselves, to be aware of thedistinctions. 

I mean you're dealing withpeople - like the local pastor who I work closely with, which might seemsurprising, is also, he was 10 years old when we first knew him. He was thelast - in the last initiation cohort, he's been initiated in the locallanguage. Now he's this enormously really smart man of about - pushing 40 now,who is having a really important role in leading the community.

So I'm increasingly becominginterested in the brokers, the people who intervene between the local communityand the company, or the state, or the church. The church of course is massivelyimportant in Papua New Guinea because it runs the schools, it runs thehospitals. I'm interested in these people and in talking with them around whatthey're doing. 

So this young pastor now isreally keen to say, we don't - we lost the stories. We need to learn how totalk to people again. He read the book and he - the first thing he did when he- we spoke to him on the phone, it's amazing, there's mobile phone coveragethere now - was to say, you're right, what you were writing about Oobi, aboutthe local social units. We call them clans now and we're being encouraged tothink of them as clans. But that's not what they were they were assemblages,they were people being brought together for particular purposes. So gettingpeople to think in a way that might allow them to communicate to the state andto the company how they want things to be organised I think is really important.You know, going back to the stuff where I was talking about relationships andcounting...

Steve Grimwade 
...yeah, please.

Monica Minnegal 
...one of the differences is... for Kubo they talk - they count in the present.So again it's not that they can't count without counting on their fingers. Butthat it's really about saying one-two-three-four-five, but it'sfirst-second-third-fourth-fifth. What we do with our counting system is weabstract numbers from the things in the world. As we teach people to abstractnumbers from the things in the world we also force them to stand away fromthose things and to engage with those things differently. It's not the firstpig and the second pig and the third pig, it's just there are an infinitenumber of pigs out there and we can count these infinite number of pigs.Whereas for them each pig is different, just like every finger is different.

Steve Grimwade 
There's a platonic pig, but is there a platonic pig in PNG? Is there an idea ofa perfect pig or there is…

Monica Minnegal 
No.

Steve Grimwade 
…just the next pig?

Monica Minnegal 
This is important, too, in terms of understanding how they engage in exchange.When you and I decide that we actually quite like each other and we're going tobe allies in the future we will exchange pigs. But these pigs have to beexactly the same. They have to be the same size, they have to be the samecolour, they have to be the same sex. The reason is that that's the only way toensure that you and I have put the same amount of effort into raising them. Andthe same way with wives, we exchange sisters. Or sisters exchange brothers,which is actually how the women think of it.

But you exchange exactlyidentical things, but you have to work to make them identical. There is noplatonic pig. What's important is the relationship of that pig to the personwho raised it. It's not an abstract pig. They get really puzzled when themining company comes and says, oh look, I really don't care who raised the pig.The price I'll give depends on its size. This is really odd to them. 

When we first went there - andthis might give a better illustration - when we first went to Gwaimasi, thevillage where we worked, they had very little knowledge of money, our sort ofmoney. For them every coin was defined. The value of that coin was defined byhow it came to be in your hands.

So 20 cent pieces were notmutually interchangeable. There was no platonic 20 cent piece, okay. Six monthslater they could say, because they didn't have much to spend money on. See this20 cent piece, that's the one that Peter gave me when I took him for a walkthrough the forest. That's the one that you gave me when I brought you apineapple. This means that the coins given to the church can't be traded in fornotes. Because those coins were given to the church, not some abstract sense ofmoney but those coins.

Steve Grimwade 
Do you have to be reasonably tough-willed and tough emotionally to deal withthe changes in these communities? Because I mean I get a sense of something,that God these sounds like really remarkable beautiful communities that are nowhaving change thrust upon them and they're losing these traditions. I mean, isthat a bad thing, or we just accept that that is?

Monica Minnegal 
Yes, you have to accept that it is, but of course it's - there are things thatI think are good. One thing, you should not romanticise these people. When Ifirst went up there the first person - the oldest person with true father alivewas 11 years old. The oldest person with both true parents alive was seven.People did not live to see their kids marry. Which is one reason why they hadthe sister exchange system. Of course they want their kids to live, of coursethey don't want to die. We wouldn't want to either. But if they want to changethose aspects of their lives other aspects will change. I'll give you one keyexample. I said, people did not live to see their children get married. Nowwith a very little bit of Western medicine they do.

Now when it comes time for kidsto marry, Mum and Dad say, well, what's in it for us? They want to influencethe choices of the kids. They are pushing a switch to bride price rather thanexchange marriage, the parents are, the older generation is. We're not imposingthis on them. These people are making decisions about how they want to engagewith the world. How they want to improve their lives. I might say, oh God, Ithink you're making a terrible mistake, but that's not really for me to sayeither.

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