Onabasulu Local Organization (Papua New Guinea, Tribal Social Organization).

Abstract

This dissertation is an analytic ethnography of aspects of local organizations among the Onabasulu of the Southern Highl and s Province of Papua New Guinea. The Onabasulu are a long house dwelling people of the sub-montane, heavily forested Great Papuan Plateau. The dissertation argues that in addition to material and historical circumstances which have important effects on local organization, Onabasulu cultural underst and ings must be considered. All of the variety in time and space which seems to originate in material and historical conditions encountered by the Onabasulu seem to have been absorbed by Onabasulu culture without any major transformations of its organizing principles. I further argue that this resilience in Onabasulu culture is at least in part to be accounted for by the manner in which a major organizing principle of Onabasulu social life and cosmology--the separate but complementary opposition of male and female--is reproduced. This dichotomy is one which is experienced by the Onabasulu in both ritual exchanges and reflection on their kinship terminology as well as in the division of labor, the physical structure of the long house, and many other contexts. It is these basic ways in which it is experienced that give it its power. In the dissertation, descriptive attention is given to Onabasulu demography, gardening, the recent history of long house formation, the lineage, the conception of the local community, and kinship terminology. This provides a useful addition to the ethnography of the Great Papuan Plateau.