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Interethnic conflict and aggression: A Melanesian datum
InrercuIrumI Rdmiom, Vol.
InrernlrriondJournd of Printed in the USA. All rights reserved.
It, pp. 401-412. 1988 Copyright
0147.1767188 $3.00 + .OO B 1988 Pcrgamon Press plc
INTERETHNIC CONFLICT AND AGGRESSION: A MELANESIAN DATUM
K. J. PATAKI-SCH WEIZER University of Papua New Guinea ABSTRACT The formal analysis of interethnic conflict and aggression requires a behavioral reference or datum for this major and critical part of the human condition. One chamcteristic of that aggregate of cultures broadly termed Melanesian, is a particular assertiveness which was and continues to be expressed as intergroup conflict at varied social scales, for example, in New Guinea. Ethnography, ecology and possible reasons for this culturally-sanctioned behavior are discussed. The value of an ethological perspective is noted, and some themes for research are suggested.
A FOCUS A consideration of interethnic conflict and aggression with respect to Papua New Guinea, or to the Melanesian cultural complex of which it is a major part, nearly enters one into scholastic preoccupation with angels on the heads of pins, or devils if one prefers an alternative metaphor. That is, an abundance of “intercultural” conflict exists, using the term culture in its more or less accepted sense of a collective guide of some consistent set of values, beliefs, and attitudes held by an ethnolinguistic group. Yet there is also a curious exemption for Papua New Guinea with respect to other contemporary exemplars of the problem. I have thus used the first word in the title in its broader sense, and “datum” since as I hope to indicate, there are deeper consistencies within these concerns.
PAPUA NEW GUINEA AND MELANESIA Papua New Guinea (PNG), newly independent in 1975, is a congery of some 3.3 million Melanesian peoples (1985) including some 750 distinct and traditional ethnolinguistic, that is, “ethnic” groups or cultures. Some of these are very small, numbering in the hundreds and a few much larger, in the hundreds of thousands; all conform to the normative definition of culture and to its dynamics. If this ethnographic setting is expanded to include the entire island of New Guinea, which is eminently Melanesian Requests for reprints should be addressed to Dr. K. J. Pataki-Schweizer, Department of Community Medicine, University of Papua New Guinea, P.O. Box 5623, Boroko, PNG.
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in its traditional populations, there are approximately 1000 such groups, 20% of the world’s languages. TO discuss this quantitative/qualitative distribution with fairness to “normal” standards of comparison is difficult, and one often finds the hapless researcher or writer in an ethnographic cul-de-sac partly of disciplinary making and partly out of desperation. For efficiency’s sake and not without some justice, one can divide the country into four regions: Southern, Highland, Northern, and Island. Each of these has a substantial number of cultures and a substantial number of consistencies in social, cultural, ecological, and genetic patterning. Summaries of these cultures, their patterns and their contrasts have been attempted by authorities and convey some idea of the situation (e.g., Chowning, 1977; cf. Hays, 1976). Broadly speaking, the bulk of societies in the western and central portion of Papua New Guinea include relatively compact communities, patrilineal or patrifocal in orientation, with an economy based on subsistence horticulture and pig breeding plus hunting and gathering; generational recall is usually quite short, and authority is essentially by achievement within each generation. Further to the east, for example Milne Bay Province and the legendary Trobriand Island, more groups are matrifocal and matrilineal in their kinship, with inherited systems of leadership, and still broadly similar modes of subsistence. The broadest linguistic phyla are two: those that are linked to Malayo-Polynesian and Southeast Asia ~Austronesian”) and those that are unique in themselves (non-Austronesian or “Papuan”), for example the Highland languages. The genesis of the latter is particularly ancient, for archaeological evidence from radiocarbon, argon, and other dating methods now reaches back beyond 20,000 years, and migration sequences of the coastal peoples do not appear to be in any dramatically shorter time-frame. OF
CONFLICT AND CONSTRAINTS One salient characteristic of these societies for our concerns here is conflict between groups, a Melanesian sine-qua-non which is noted by the earliest Europeans. This at least is a characteristic which both literally and figuratively struck these early visitors in the late 15th and the 16th centuries. It is also a characteristic which has continued to the present and has re-emerged as a major if not dramatic factor in contemporary Papua New Guinean post-Independence life and politics (British New Guinea, 1900-1901; Mikloucho-Mac~y, 1975; Thomson, 1892). Why would this be so? An answer to this question is crude and partial. There are, however, indications from detailed analyses of local situations which spell out a larger set of factors. These include:
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1. Social organization which is not overly defined or rigid, in contrast with many other tribal systems elsewhere in the world, for example parts of Africa, and has been characterized as having “loose” social structure (Barnes, 1962; Langness, 1964); 2. Primary functional social units which are found in the local group with its immediate level of relevance and meaning, whether the specific language speakers are many or few (Pataki-Schweizer, 1980, pp. 31-37); 3. Ecological niches and related subsistence practices (i.e., “economy” to this writer) emphasizing land and residence with a degree of intimacy which, if violated, demands immediate aggressive response (cf. Malmberg, 1980; Pataki-Schweizer, 1980; Vayda, 1976); 4. Cultural values which put a premium on flamboyant, assertive male behavior and act-out aggression, in particular through oratory and warfare (Heider & Gardner, 1969; Read, 1965); 5. A sanctioning of individualistic, personalized, or idiosyncratic behavior, especially for males, which is usually channeled through preferred cultural modes of expression including assertive behavior (cf. Pataki-Schweizer, 1987; Schieffelin, 1983; Watson, 1973); 6. The precontact absence of any larger or overriding polities exercising centralized control (cf. Robbins, 1982; Sillitoe, 1978); 7. Worldviews which could be richly artistic, symbolic, and evocative, for example the Sepik and Fly River cultures, yet were intimately linked or looped back to cultural tenets of violence, for example headhunting and/or formal intergroup warfare in the Sepik, Gulf, and Highland regions (cf. Hallpike, 1977); 8. Sociocultural structures with modes of production that are oriented to immediate survival needs for the local group with little surplus for larger social goals, insofar as surplus provides time for formal elaboration of such efforts (cf. Allen, 1984). For all the appearance of what seems at times to have been or be almost gratuitous violence, there are nonetheless various constraints on the escalation of conflict in these Melanesian societies which have been noted (e.g., Berndt, 1964; Glass, 1968). Most PNG societies have certain social mechanisms and cultural parameters which tend to prevent major escalation, and these are linked to the realities of existence in a shifting subsistence situation: to triumph or transcend, one must first survive. In ecological settings with a modal demographic size, taking communities as the functional unit, of some 200 individuals on the average (PatakiSchweizer, 1980, pp. 112-116), group viability can be vulnerable and at times precarious. It is this aspect, given the intensity of their conflicts at times (e.g., Berndt, 1962), which contrasts so markedly with modern “hi-
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tech” conflicts today. Or, as a leader (Melanesian Tok-Pisin: bikpelaman) in the Highlands once put it to this writer (contextually): “You must all be crazy to fight with those weapons on that scale.” Constraints on conflict in Papua New Guinea particularly include the use of reciprocity, a principle of major significance in Melanesia, both substantively (items) and symbolically (rituals). This includes gift exchanges between groups (e.g., pigs, bride-price, and now money and beer) as well as aggressive retaliation. Such reciprocity provides appropriately-scaled balancing mechanisms that do militate against excessive or cumulative imbalance and violence which could negate survival viability. Traditional reciprocity, both positive and negative, has been affected by the introduction of alcohol which now figures strongly in much of social life and social exchange, if not social dysfunction (Marshall, 1982). It has also been affected by rural-to-urban flow, a rapid population increase, and unemployment within the cash sector of the economy, especially in the last decade. Whatever its present nexus, intergroup conflict in Papua New Guinea still tends to reflect direct or residual cultural constraints, and the degree to which it is ultimately dysfunctional or disruptive remains a question (cf. Gordon & Meggitt, 1985), as do ideological premises which might arise such as exploitation (cf. Schiltz, 1984). As stated, the above observations are hardly parsimonious. Yet they do touch upon some shared characteristics of Papua New Guinean societies. The proof of this cultural pudding is seen today: a re-emergence of traditional warfare particularly in those parts of the country where it was almost intense and elaborated, that is, the Highlands. At the same time of this writing, several provinces in the Highlands are now experiencing social disruption through clan and tribal fighting. More broadly, the introduced pattern of a modern, democratically-constituted state has impacted with the tribal custom of conflict, with the latter appearing to sustain the day at local levels. This is a matter of growing concern to the national government and one for which no immediate solution is evident.
COMPARISONS AND ETHNOGRAPHY Questions of comparability, however, are inherently complex if not tenuous, even after admitting problems of perception and definition. There are larger-scale geopolitical characteristics for those other pressing sites and situations of interethnic conflict prominent today where clash reflects politics as such; ethnic conflict involving that most misleading of terms, race; or the murderously Byzantine battle of ideas and people evoked by religious and ideological competition. If these fit major examples elsewhere, they do not really fit the Melanesian setting. Yet a com-
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mon core of “comparability” is present: group aggression, collective violence and conflict, destruction, pain, and death. This core of comparability is complicated by questions of frequency and scale. While “random” is not the best term to describe the incidence of Melanesian tribal conflicts, something like this is evident if one attempts a quantitative assessment, perhaps more like a stochastic walk through this particular Valley of the Shadow of Violence. Scale is also a factor, for intercultural fighting in Melanesia is very catholic or democratic in its expression: fighting occurs within cultural (i.e., ethnolinguistic) groups yet also occurs across their borders, where it is eminently intercultural and “interethnic” if we use accepted definitions plus their implications. However, one does not find the sorts of conflict now characteristic of the Levant or Southeast Asia, for example. Perhaps these are emerging out of the traditional PNG practice of “payback”: a circle of violent revenge which required a victim from the group related to the initiating act, and is now increasingly satisfied by individuals from the province of the initiators. In any case, the intensity of the acts also indicates motivations beyond the rationale of geography. The above considerations are made with regard to their possible generalizability. Usually, such generalizations are derived from sources with substantive ethnographic context, which for the writer are descriptions of actual human behavior informed to some degree by theory concerning that behavior and not burdened by too overriding a methodological or ideological commitment. While this filters out a considerable amount of the existing corpus, some solid or “thick” statements are still available. However, they too have problems: (a) they are deeply constrained by their particular time, place, and setting; and (b) they reflect the “emic/etic” problem, that is, characteristics of the observer disjunctive in relation to the observed and vice-versa. These problems are nothing new to field research, and have simply become more evident as we understand (or accept) them better. Melanesian ethnography is rife with such concerns, which have on occasion led to definite and constructive insights and have had their influence as theory, for example in kinship, social order, and gender. Accordingly, much of the Papua New Guinean ethnographic evidence is not directly applicable to other conflict situations under consideration. Another related area, however, is evident and pertinent, which I call the ethological datum. ETHOLOGICAL
ASPECTS
The works of such ethologists as Lorenz (1967, 1981), Eibl-Eibesfeldt (1975, 1979), and Tinbergen (1968) are well known, granting the stimuli or catalysts of Ardrey and Morris, and we have proceeded beyond self-
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protective critiques based on species or discipline-specific rationales. Eibl-Eibesfeldt has assessed the matter of aggression in detail, and has drawn some very convincing baselines for the balanced consideration of human aggression and human altruism. Partly, the thorough observation and fieldwork of such research provides firm substantiation for their conclusions. One does not need to enter here into the arcane and pockmarked arena of sociobiology, other than to agree that certain social survival behaviors certainly have determinant genetic components in them, and reference is again made to the two points about ethnography immediately above (cf. Barkow, 1978; Marler & Terrace, 1984). With respect to an ethological datum, it is possible that PNG provides something closer to this prime or primal focus, given that we are considering behavior which is human, and cultural in its expression. Or, we are closer to the grundlage, at least as I understand it from observations of aggression and conflict in Melanesia, Southeast Asia, and North America over the past 25 years. Primal functions of coping with immediate challenge and survival over time, plus transcendence of meaning over the finitude of the first two have been generalizable from those situations of group conflict which I have observed and experienced. These also appear, directly or indirectly, in reports where the above caveats about reliability in data have been assumed. Overall, these functions appear inextricably associated with the need for expiation of and meaning about unresolved uncertainty with respect to loss, continued pain, and/or threat of annihilation. This fulsome yet intentional phrasing raises a third domain of consideration in addition to the cultural and the ethological: the semantic. SEMANTIC
ASPECTS
It is clear that we humans operate in a world which is dramatically if not increasingly symbolic, and that these symbols become reified and thus carry their own weight and impetus, as is evident in intercultural violence (cf. Crapanzano, 1985, pp. 87-89). And it is also clear that any human interaction with cognitive content, however skewed, involves some semantic aspect. This is often the case with group insults which lead to interclan or intergroup violence in Papua New Guinea (e.g., Pataki-Schweizer, 1980, p. 106f). There is growing awareness that semantic phenomena have their own larger reality, and this has led to the development of new areas such as semiotics and discourse analysis (Singer, 1980; Wagner, 1977). While we may not necessarily be “such things as dreams are made of,” these are certainly articulated into our behavior by the use of language with all its elusiveness and deceptions, if not via a magnificent deterministic imprimatur as Sapir and Whorf attempted to elaborate many years ago.
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I am thinking here specifically of the terms “war,” “aggression,” “violence,” and particularly “conflict.” It is not unreasonable to posit that any human act of violence is part of a more inclusive symbolic frame with particular semantic cues or bits as stimuli, for otherwise we are left with reflex and it does not appear that group violence is purely reflexive, however crazed the crowd. The point is that it is hard to separate or distinguish the act of conflict from the semantic state which informs it; yet we often take the latter as a focus or end in itself, that is as both explicans and explicandum upon analysis. Many of the journal articles I have surveyed on intercultural conflict-and there are curiously fewer than suspected, with some notable exceptions-leave one with that impression.
CONFLICT: THEORIES AND A CRITIQUE Perhaps I lean to harshly on these efforts. They have led to a substantial body of theory about aggression, and a considerable set of modals (e.g., Brain & Benton, 1981; Hartup & de Wit, 1978; Mackal, 1979). Yet surveying the latter, I am left feeling that they are better summarized as “modular metaphors.” There are many, each reflecting a particular preferred argument: historical, physiological, psychological, psychoanalytic, deviant, economic, social, cultural (e.g., Melanesia), genetic, teleogical (e.g., Nietzsche), structural, and dialectical. All of these are suborned by semantics, that is by a structured frame of articulation and are, overall, often-elegant partials towards a calculus of conflict explication for which we do not yet know the formulation. They are singularly synchronic, or they are extendedly diachronic, or they reflect, if not indulge, an inordinate disciplinary “presence” refracted through their data. If not these, then they present an overriding and all too understandable preoccupation with methodology per se. None of these do necessary justice to the dynamic interface between the qualitative and the quantitative, each partials of some broader domain in which phenomena (e.g., the action of conflict) and its metaphysic (the subsumed context for that act) are integrated. This may appear unfair or simplistic. Yet it is the result of seeing too many research efforts fall short of informing about the situation from which they were derived, and certainly far too many attempts at complex paradigms ineffectually applied to real sociopolitical problems (e.g., economic development in Papua New Guinea). Whatever the approach, three principles appear to hold for these exercises: (a) exigesis of behavior is not explication of its data; (b) explication of data, if achieved without too heavy a methodological overburden, is not explanation; and (c) explanation of data, where effected, does not provide direct application or utility.
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While it may appear to do so, it does not have the “coherence” of full presence requisite in any state of actual sapient behavior. One reflects again and again about these constraints and especially the last, for they do not appear linked to any overriding naivete. I find related problems, here addressed to understanding interethnic conflict and deriving guides to alleviate that conflict, include confusion of time-scales, uncertainty about appropriate behavioral scale, fixity of semantic frame, and a distorting degree of removal from the collectivities and individuals directly involved in the conflict. That is, these “models” do not address the simultaneity (i.e., synchronicity) of both diachronic process and the immediacy of praxis. Here one cannot ignore the relevance and power of certain insights, many from the pure sciences: these include the disruptive effect of “measuring,” after Heisenberg; areas of exclusion nonetheless assumed in the paradigm, or “excluded middles,” after Russell; the limitation of every explanatory/predictive paradigm, after Godel; the limitation of language per se, after Wittgenstein; the problem of value-relativity, after many theorists in anthropology; overemphasis on the historical nexus, after Popper; and the overarching power of media, after McLuhan. There is, overall, a horrendous immediacy in acts of aggressive conflict (perhaps reflected in the curiously selective if not sparse ethnographic data base) which makes it a particularly difficult subject for dispassionate theory and/or passionate rectification, as with the cautious if not evasive approaches to death and dying traditionally in the health services. This difficulty is limned trenchantly in the Latin Requiem Mass as mars stupebit, for every proximity to human extinction is stupefying. These considerations are stated not so much out of cynicism or pessimism, as out of a harsh observed and experienced reality. Still, avenues or vectors of approach do appear in the study of intercultural conflict and aggression. These include: 1. Recognition that we are dealing with multiple domains and processes, and that this is an inherent and pervasive characteristic of the problem. These domains include the ideal, the collectivity, and the individual; and both cognitive and affective modes of process. If a program does not provide for them in its design, it becomes essentially a set of loops feeding back upon the excluded element or elements. 2. Homeostatic modelling of sociocultural process (use psychocultural if you wish, noting 1 above) is not indicated, yet we have inherited this paradigmatic pose from the past; that is, we repeatedly assume some sort of conclusive fixity and resolution inherent in our paradigms, ultimately in abeyance of the behavior from which our data are derived. This is partly the broader legacy or spin-off of positivist science, and it does not jibe well with the
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atemporal quality of cultural ideals held nonetheless by individuals who live (and fight) within a specific life-cycle, and enacted via social groups which are always transient in their membership. 3. Psychobiological determinants (i.e., ethology in the fuller sense) in intercultural conflict include individual and collective needs for immediate coping, survival, and a sense of transcendence. These needs involve some resolution of the unresolved past with some sense of balance (e.g., revenge) and some sense of continuity into a future, and are characterized by strong felt meaning. 4. Any consideration of conflict includes an influential semantic frame, and a praxis of accurately or erroneously informed human decisions. These decisions are essentially a nested cluster of enacted symbols linked to some context of meaning (semiosis), and through it to the unresolved antinomies of the past (i.e., their history) and to sapient biology (i.e., drives and needs).
ON APPLICATION Solutions to intercultural conflict, of pressing concern today in this fraught world of intemperate behavior and intem~rate technology, must address such primes rather more directly. More specifically, they demand attention to deep sapient functions which involve the dynamics of decision about conflict, and the particular sorts of ~e~~~~~gthat inform or distort these decisions. Such “deep” functions are not primarily summed from history, nor derivable by ideological dialectics, nor experienced purely by embracing praxis; and the latter two are certainly with, if not overwhelming us now. It is these deep functions which structure or metastructure (Bateson, 1972) acts and are themselves the parameters of action. It seems that they should be accessible, and that they could be utilized in more formal educative efforts. If one agrees that both “learning” and “relearning” are possible at certain critical social foci and along certain critical cultural paths, the resolution of such conflict should be possible (cf. Alland, 1972; Givens & Nettleship, 1976; Montague, 1976). Specifically toward the need for information about interethnic conflict, one would like to know more about four areas that deductively, inductively, and intuitively appear important to this writer: (a) research on ambiguity or uncertainty shared by participants immediately prior to conflict; (b) research on decisions and attendant decision-states at the very initiation of conflict; (c) research on decisions and attendant decision-states at the very cessation of conflict; and (d) research on the held ideals of leaders actively participating in conflict. I have spoken in this paper of the situation of intercultural conflict in Melanesia, of a critique of existing research on conflict and aggression, and of characteristics of our research and paradigms which skew our
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efforts with regard to dealing with interethnic conflict. Interethnic conflict is an area of research which transcends the deceptive blandness of terminology as it searches out Everyman. It will not contain itself in waiting until a new methodological vogue or better funding surfaces. It has the potential to form a global matrix of pervasive social disruption, and it should have strong stimulus for both informed and informing efforts by our professions now no longer very distant from it, in a world no longer capable of ease.
REFERENCES ALLAND, A. Jr. (1972). The human imperative. New York: Columbia University Press. ALLEN, M. (1984). Elders, chiefs, and Big Men: Authority legitimation and political evolution in Melanesia. American Ethnologist, 11, 20-41. BARKOW, J. H. (1978). Culture and sociobiology. American Anthropologist, 80, S-20. BARNES, J. A. (1962). African models in the New Guinea Highlands. Man, 62, 5-9. BATESON, G. (1972). Steps to an ecology of mind. New York: Ballantine Books. BERNDT, R. M. (1962). Excess and restraint -Social control among a New Guinea mountain people. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. BERNDT, R. M. (1964). Warfare in the New Guinea Highlands. American Anthropologist 4(2) [Special publication], 183-203. BRAIN, P. F., & BENTON, D. (1981). Multidisciplinary approaches to aggression research. Amsterdam and New York: Elsevier/North-Holland. British New Guinea. (1900-1901). Colonial reports 1900-1901 (Appendix D). London: British Colonial Service. CHOWNING, A. (1977). An introduction to the peoples and cultures of Melanesia (2nd ed.). Menlo Park, CA: Cumming. CRAPANZANO, V. (1985, March 25). A reporter at large (South-Africa-Part II). The New Yorker, pp. 52-97. EIBL-EIBESFELDT, I. (1975). Book review [Review of Love and Hate and Die !Ko-Buschmann-Gesellschaft]. Current Anthropology, 16, 151-162. EIBL-EIBESFELDT, I. (1979). The biology of peace and war-Men, animals, and aggression (C. Mosbacher, Trans.). London: Thames and Hudson. GIVENS, R. D., & NETTLESHIP, M. A. (Eds.). (1976). Discussions on war and human aggression. The Hague: Mouton. GLASS, R. M. (1968). Huli of Papua-A cognatic descent system. Cahiers de L’Homme, Nouvelle Serie VIII. Paris and The Hague: Mouton. GORDON, R. J., & MEGGITT, M. J. (1985). Low and order in the New Guinea Highlands: Encounters with Enga. Hanover and London: University Press of New England. HALLPIKE, C. R. (1977). Bloodshed and vengeance in the Papuan MountainsThe generation of conflict in Tauade society. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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HARTUP, W. W., & DE WIT, J. (1978). Origins of aggression. The Hague: Mouton. HAYS, T. E. (1976). Anthropology of the New Guinea Highlands- An anotated bibliography. New York and London: Garland. HEIDER, K. G., & GARDNER, R. G. (1969). Gardens of war: Life and death in the New Guinea Stone Age. London: Deutsch. LANGNESS, L. L. (1964). Some problems in the conceptualization of Highlands social structure. American Anthropologist, 66(4), 162-182. LORENZ, K. (1967). On aggression (M. K. Wilson, Trans.). New York: Harcourt, Brace and World. LORENZ, K. (1981). Thefoundution of ethology (K. Lorenz & R. W. Kickert, Trans.). Vienna: Springer-Verlag. MACKAL, P. K. (1979). Psychological theories of aggression. Amsterdam and New York: North-Holland. MALMBERG, T. (1980). Human territoriality. The Hague: Mouton. MARLER, P., & TERRACE, H. S. (Eds.). (1984). The biology of leurning. New York: Springer-Verlag. MARSHALL, M. (Ed.). (1982). Through a glass darkly: Beer and modernization in Papua New Guinea. (Monograph Series No. 18). Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea: Institute of Applied Social and Economic Research. MIKLQUCHO-MACLAY, N. N. (1975). New Guinea Diaries 1871-1883 (C. L. Sentinella, Trans.). Madang: Kristen Press. MONTAGUE, A. (1976). The nature of human aggression. New York: Oxford University Press. PATAKI-SCHWEIZER, K. J. (1980). A New Guinea landscape: Community, space and time in the Eastern Highlands. Anthropological studies in the Eastern Highiands of New Guinea (Vol. IV). Seattle: University of Washington Press. PATAKI-SCHWEIZER, K. J. (1987). Strongpela Meri: A female leader in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea. In L. L. Langness & T. E. Hays (Eds.), Anthropology in the High Valleys: Essays on the New Guinea Highlands in honor of K. E. Read (pp. 137-162). Novato, CA: Chandler and Sharp. READ, K. E. (1965). The High Valley. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. ROBBINS, S. (1982). Auyana: Those who held onto home. Anthropological studies in the Eastern Highlands of New Guinea (Vol. VI). Seattle: University of Washington Press. SCHIEFFELIN, E. L. (1983). Anger and shame in the tropical forest: On affect as a cultural system in Papua New Guinea. Ethos, 11, 181-191. SCHILTZ, M. (1984, September). War, peace and the exercise of power: Perspectives on society and the state in the New Guinea Highlands. Paper presented at the Australian Anthropological Society Annual Conference, Sydney. SILLITOE, P. (1978). Big men and war in New Guinea. Man, 13, 252-271. SINGER, M. (1980). Signs of the self: An exploration in semiotic anthropology. American Anthropologist, 82, 485507. THOMSON, J. P. (1892). British New Guinea. London: George Phillips and Son.
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TINBERGEN, N. (1968). On war and peace in animals and men. Science, 160(3835), 1411-1418. VAYDA, A. P. (1976). War in ecological perspective: Persistence, change, and adaptive processes in three Oceanic societies. New York: Plenum. WAGNER, R. (1977). Scientific and indigenous Papua conceptualizations of the innate: A semiotic critique of the ecological perspective. In T. Bayliss-Smith & R. Feachem (Eds.), Subsistence and survival-Rural ecology in the Pacific. London: Academic Press. WATSON, J. B. (1973). Tairora: The politics of despotism in a small society. In R. M. Berndt & P. Lawrence (Eds.), Politics in New Guinea. Perth: University of Western Australia Press; Seattle: University of Washington Press.
ABSTRACT
TRANSLATIONS
L’amlyse formellecks cmnflitset cks aggressions @x%n~~~simprtantsetcritiques dsla oonditionhunains exigeme bass ck &&enaa danslesfaits du amprtement. Un tel Qbnent &aract&istiqusdansle a.n~prtenent c&s culturesh laP!!aresieestla~&entation prticuli&eck uxtains siqes agressif,qui s'exprimelors &as rencmntres entreles groups. Elle existesur Q diffkentsniveauxsodaw. Ch discuteles as~ctse'thnogapliquesetdoslogiquesainsiqreles causes pssihles ck da arnprtenentculturellenent sanctiork. On soulignela-valeur d'ureappoche &halogiqueeton popse quelquasthenesde redxr&e. (author-su@isdabstract)
El ardlisis formal&al ax3flictoyla agesidnentre srulxxi &nicos rquiere wicbsncia 0’ data baaada en axnportamientos que reflejenesteaspectotandxisivockla axrdici~hunans. una c3racteristic3 de1 ~nglaneracbde culturasdemninacbs melanasiasesmtip prticularda afixmacidn popiaque se manifestaba y axkinGa siencbexpresadaen axrflictos inter&nioxavirxxmuales&laescalasocial, pr ejenploenNuwa Guirma. Enestemanuscritose discutenlaetxxjrafia, la ecologiay otrasrazonssqurpdieranexplicareste axnprtxnniento tanaoa~& en_esasculturas.Laimprtancia de1 pmto da vista etoldgia, es sermtadayse sugierentc$iODs pra iwzstigacionesfuturas. (author-suppliedabstract)
InrernlrriondJournd of Printed in the USA. All rights reserved.
It, pp. 401-412. 1988 Copyright
0147.1767188 $3.00 + .OO B 1988 Pcrgamon Press plc
INTERETHNIC CONFLICT AND AGGRESSION: A MELANESIAN DATUM
K. J. PATAKI-SCH WEIZER University of Papua New Guinea ABSTRACT The formal analysis of interethnic conflict and aggression requires a behavioral reference or datum for this major and critical part of the human condition. One chamcteristic of that aggregate of cultures broadly termed Melanesian, is a particular assertiveness which was and continues to be expressed as intergroup conflict at varied social scales, for example, in New Guinea. Ethnography, ecology and possible reasons for this culturally-sanctioned behavior are discussed. The value of an ethological perspective is noted, and some themes for research are suggested.
A FOCUS A consideration of interethnic conflict and aggression with respect to Papua New Guinea, or to the Melanesian cultural complex of which it is a major part, nearly enters one into scholastic preoccupation with angels on the heads of pins, or devils if one prefers an alternative metaphor. That is, an abundance of “intercultural” conflict exists, using the term culture in its more or less accepted sense of a collective guide of some consistent set of values, beliefs, and attitudes held by an ethnolinguistic group. Yet there is also a curious exemption for Papua New Guinea with respect to other contemporary exemplars of the problem. I have thus used the first word in the title in its broader sense, and “datum” since as I hope to indicate, there are deeper consistencies within these concerns.
PAPUA NEW GUINEA AND MELANESIA Papua New Guinea (PNG), newly independent in 1975, is a congery of some 3.3 million Melanesian peoples (1985) including some 750 distinct and traditional ethnolinguistic, that is, “ethnic” groups or cultures. Some of these are very small, numbering in the hundreds and a few much larger, in the hundreds of thousands; all conform to the normative definition of culture and to its dynamics. If this ethnographic setting is expanded to include the entire island of New Guinea, which is eminently Melanesian Requests for reprints should be addressed to Dr. K. J. Pataki-Schweizer, Department of Community Medicine, University of Papua New Guinea, P.O. Box 5623, Boroko, PNG.
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in its traditional populations, there are approximately 1000 such groups, 20% of the world’s languages. TO discuss this quantitative/qualitative distribution with fairness to “normal” standards of comparison is difficult, and one often finds the hapless researcher or writer in an ethnographic cul-de-sac partly of disciplinary making and partly out of desperation. For efficiency’s sake and not without some justice, one can divide the country into four regions: Southern, Highland, Northern, and Island. Each of these has a substantial number of cultures and a substantial number of consistencies in social, cultural, ecological, and genetic patterning. Summaries of these cultures, their patterns and their contrasts have been attempted by authorities and convey some idea of the situation (e.g., Chowning, 1977; cf. Hays, 1976). Broadly speaking, the bulk of societies in the western and central portion of Papua New Guinea include relatively compact communities, patrilineal or patrifocal in orientation, with an economy based on subsistence horticulture and pig breeding plus hunting and gathering; generational recall is usually quite short, and authority is essentially by achievement within each generation. Further to the east, for example Milne Bay Province and the legendary Trobriand Island, more groups are matrifocal and matrilineal in their kinship, with inherited systems of leadership, and still broadly similar modes of subsistence. The broadest linguistic phyla are two: those that are linked to Malayo-Polynesian and Southeast Asia ~Austronesian”) and those that are unique in themselves (non-Austronesian or “Papuan”), for example the Highland languages. The genesis of the latter is particularly ancient, for archaeological evidence from radiocarbon, argon, and other dating methods now reaches back beyond 20,000 years, and migration sequences of the coastal peoples do not appear to be in any dramatically shorter time-frame. OF
CONFLICT AND CONSTRAINTS One salient characteristic of these societies for our concerns here is conflict between groups, a Melanesian sine-qua-non which is noted by the earliest Europeans. This at least is a characteristic which both literally and figuratively struck these early visitors in the late 15th and the 16th centuries. It is also a characteristic which has continued to the present and has re-emerged as a major if not dramatic factor in contemporary Papua New Guinean post-Independence life and politics (British New Guinea, 1900-1901; Mikloucho-Mac~y, 1975; Thomson, 1892). Why would this be so? An answer to this question is crude and partial. There are, however, indications from detailed analyses of local situations which spell out a larger set of factors. These include:
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1. Social organization which is not overly defined or rigid, in contrast with many other tribal systems elsewhere in the world, for example parts of Africa, and has been characterized as having “loose” social structure (Barnes, 1962; Langness, 1964); 2. Primary functional social units which are found in the local group with its immediate level of relevance and meaning, whether the specific language speakers are many or few (Pataki-Schweizer, 1980, pp. 31-37); 3. Ecological niches and related subsistence practices (i.e., “economy” to this writer) emphasizing land and residence with a degree of intimacy which, if violated, demands immediate aggressive response (cf. Malmberg, 1980; Pataki-Schweizer, 1980; Vayda, 1976); 4. Cultural values which put a premium on flamboyant, assertive male behavior and act-out aggression, in particular through oratory and warfare (Heider & Gardner, 1969; Read, 1965); 5. A sanctioning of individualistic, personalized, or idiosyncratic behavior, especially for males, which is usually channeled through preferred cultural modes of expression including assertive behavior (cf. Pataki-Schweizer, 1987; Schieffelin, 1983; Watson, 1973); 6. The precontact absence of any larger or overriding polities exercising centralized control (cf. Robbins, 1982; Sillitoe, 1978); 7. Worldviews which could be richly artistic, symbolic, and evocative, for example the Sepik and Fly River cultures, yet were intimately linked or looped back to cultural tenets of violence, for example headhunting and/or formal intergroup warfare in the Sepik, Gulf, and Highland regions (cf. Hallpike, 1977); 8. Sociocultural structures with modes of production that are oriented to immediate survival needs for the local group with little surplus for larger social goals, insofar as surplus provides time for formal elaboration of such efforts (cf. Allen, 1984). For all the appearance of what seems at times to have been or be almost gratuitous violence, there are nonetheless various constraints on the escalation of conflict in these Melanesian societies which have been noted (e.g., Berndt, 1964; Glass, 1968). Most PNG societies have certain social mechanisms and cultural parameters which tend to prevent major escalation, and these are linked to the realities of existence in a shifting subsistence situation: to triumph or transcend, one must first survive. In ecological settings with a modal demographic size, taking communities as the functional unit, of some 200 individuals on the average (PatakiSchweizer, 1980, pp. 112-116), group viability can be vulnerable and at times precarious. It is this aspect, given the intensity of their conflicts at times (e.g., Berndt, 1962), which contrasts so markedly with modern “hi-
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tech” conflicts today. Or, as a leader (Melanesian Tok-Pisin: bikpelaman) in the Highlands once put it to this writer (contextually): “You must all be crazy to fight with those weapons on that scale.” Constraints on conflict in Papua New Guinea particularly include the use of reciprocity, a principle of major significance in Melanesia, both substantively (items) and symbolically (rituals). This includes gift exchanges between groups (e.g., pigs, bride-price, and now money and beer) as well as aggressive retaliation. Such reciprocity provides appropriately-scaled balancing mechanisms that do militate against excessive or cumulative imbalance and violence which could negate survival viability. Traditional reciprocity, both positive and negative, has been affected by the introduction of alcohol which now figures strongly in much of social life and social exchange, if not social dysfunction (Marshall, 1982). It has also been affected by rural-to-urban flow, a rapid population increase, and unemployment within the cash sector of the economy, especially in the last decade. Whatever its present nexus, intergroup conflict in Papua New Guinea still tends to reflect direct or residual cultural constraints, and the degree to which it is ultimately dysfunctional or disruptive remains a question (cf. Gordon & Meggitt, 1985), as do ideological premises which might arise such as exploitation (cf. Schiltz, 1984). As stated, the above observations are hardly parsimonious. Yet they do touch upon some shared characteristics of Papua New Guinean societies. The proof of this cultural pudding is seen today: a re-emergence of traditional warfare particularly in those parts of the country where it was almost intense and elaborated, that is, the Highlands. At the same time of this writing, several provinces in the Highlands are now experiencing social disruption through clan and tribal fighting. More broadly, the introduced pattern of a modern, democratically-constituted state has impacted with the tribal custom of conflict, with the latter appearing to sustain the day at local levels. This is a matter of growing concern to the national government and one for which no immediate solution is evident.
COMPARISONS AND ETHNOGRAPHY Questions of comparability, however, are inherently complex if not tenuous, even after admitting problems of perception and definition. There are larger-scale geopolitical characteristics for those other pressing sites and situations of interethnic conflict prominent today where clash reflects politics as such; ethnic conflict involving that most misleading of terms, race; or the murderously Byzantine battle of ideas and people evoked by religious and ideological competition. If these fit major examples elsewhere, they do not really fit the Melanesian setting. Yet a com-
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mon core of “comparability” is present: group aggression, collective violence and conflict, destruction, pain, and death. This core of comparability is complicated by questions of frequency and scale. While “random” is not the best term to describe the incidence of Melanesian tribal conflicts, something like this is evident if one attempts a quantitative assessment, perhaps more like a stochastic walk through this particular Valley of the Shadow of Violence. Scale is also a factor, for intercultural fighting in Melanesia is very catholic or democratic in its expression: fighting occurs within cultural (i.e., ethnolinguistic) groups yet also occurs across their borders, where it is eminently intercultural and “interethnic” if we use accepted definitions plus their implications. However, one does not find the sorts of conflict now characteristic of the Levant or Southeast Asia, for example. Perhaps these are emerging out of the traditional PNG practice of “payback”: a circle of violent revenge which required a victim from the group related to the initiating act, and is now increasingly satisfied by individuals from the province of the initiators. In any case, the intensity of the acts also indicates motivations beyond the rationale of geography. The above considerations are made with regard to their possible generalizability. Usually, such generalizations are derived from sources with substantive ethnographic context, which for the writer are descriptions of actual human behavior informed to some degree by theory concerning that behavior and not burdened by too overriding a methodological or ideological commitment. While this filters out a considerable amount of the existing corpus, some solid or “thick” statements are still available. However, they too have problems: (a) they are deeply constrained by their particular time, place, and setting; and (b) they reflect the “emic/etic” problem, that is, characteristics of the observer disjunctive in relation to the observed and vice-versa. These problems are nothing new to field research, and have simply become more evident as we understand (or accept) them better. Melanesian ethnography is rife with such concerns, which have on occasion led to definite and constructive insights and have had their influence as theory, for example in kinship, social order, and gender. Accordingly, much of the Papua New Guinean ethnographic evidence is not directly applicable to other conflict situations under consideration. Another related area, however, is evident and pertinent, which I call the ethological datum. ETHOLOGICAL
ASPECTS
The works of such ethologists as Lorenz (1967, 1981), Eibl-Eibesfeldt (1975, 1979), and Tinbergen (1968) are well known, granting the stimuli or catalysts of Ardrey and Morris, and we have proceeded beyond self-
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protective critiques based on species or discipline-specific rationales. Eibl-Eibesfeldt has assessed the matter of aggression in detail, and has drawn some very convincing baselines for the balanced consideration of human aggression and human altruism. Partly, the thorough observation and fieldwork of such research provides firm substantiation for their conclusions. One does not need to enter here into the arcane and pockmarked arena of sociobiology, other than to agree that certain social survival behaviors certainly have determinant genetic components in them, and reference is again made to the two points about ethnography immediately above (cf. Barkow, 1978; Marler & Terrace, 1984). With respect to an ethological datum, it is possible that PNG provides something closer to this prime or primal focus, given that we are considering behavior which is human, and cultural in its expression. Or, we are closer to the grundlage, at least as I understand it from observations of aggression and conflict in Melanesia, Southeast Asia, and North America over the past 25 years. Primal functions of coping with immediate challenge and survival over time, plus transcendence of meaning over the finitude of the first two have been generalizable from those situations of group conflict which I have observed and experienced. These also appear, directly or indirectly, in reports where the above caveats about reliability in data have been assumed. Overall, these functions appear inextricably associated with the need for expiation of and meaning about unresolved uncertainty with respect to loss, continued pain, and/or threat of annihilation. This fulsome yet intentional phrasing raises a third domain of consideration in addition to the cultural and the ethological: the semantic. SEMANTIC
ASPECTS
It is clear that we humans operate in a world which is dramatically if not increasingly symbolic, and that these symbols become reified and thus carry their own weight and impetus, as is evident in intercultural violence (cf. Crapanzano, 1985, pp. 87-89). And it is also clear that any human interaction with cognitive content, however skewed, involves some semantic aspect. This is often the case with group insults which lead to interclan or intergroup violence in Papua New Guinea (e.g., Pataki-Schweizer, 1980, p. 106f). There is growing awareness that semantic phenomena have their own larger reality, and this has led to the development of new areas such as semiotics and discourse analysis (Singer, 1980; Wagner, 1977). While we may not necessarily be “such things as dreams are made of,” these are certainly articulated into our behavior by the use of language with all its elusiveness and deceptions, if not via a magnificent deterministic imprimatur as Sapir and Whorf attempted to elaborate many years ago.
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I am thinking here specifically of the terms “war,” “aggression,” “violence,” and particularly “conflict.” It is not unreasonable to posit that any human act of violence is part of a more inclusive symbolic frame with particular semantic cues or bits as stimuli, for otherwise we are left with reflex and it does not appear that group violence is purely reflexive, however crazed the crowd. The point is that it is hard to separate or distinguish the act of conflict from the semantic state which informs it; yet we often take the latter as a focus or end in itself, that is as both explicans and explicandum upon analysis. Many of the journal articles I have surveyed on intercultural conflict-and there are curiously fewer than suspected, with some notable exceptions-leave one with that impression.
CONFLICT: THEORIES AND A CRITIQUE Perhaps I lean to harshly on these efforts. They have led to a substantial body of theory about aggression, and a considerable set of modals (e.g., Brain & Benton, 1981; Hartup & de Wit, 1978; Mackal, 1979). Yet surveying the latter, I am left feeling that they are better summarized as “modular metaphors.” There are many, each reflecting a particular preferred argument: historical, physiological, psychological, psychoanalytic, deviant, economic, social, cultural (e.g., Melanesia), genetic, teleogical (e.g., Nietzsche), structural, and dialectical. All of these are suborned by semantics, that is by a structured frame of articulation and are, overall, often-elegant partials towards a calculus of conflict explication for which we do not yet know the formulation. They are singularly synchronic, or they are extendedly diachronic, or they reflect, if not indulge, an inordinate disciplinary “presence” refracted through their data. If not these, then they present an overriding and all too understandable preoccupation with methodology per se. None of these do necessary justice to the dynamic interface between the qualitative and the quantitative, each partials of some broader domain in which phenomena (e.g., the action of conflict) and its metaphysic (the subsumed context for that act) are integrated. This may appear unfair or simplistic. Yet it is the result of seeing too many research efforts fall short of informing about the situation from which they were derived, and certainly far too many attempts at complex paradigms ineffectually applied to real sociopolitical problems (e.g., economic development in Papua New Guinea). Whatever the approach, three principles appear to hold for these exercises: (a) exigesis of behavior is not explication of its data; (b) explication of data, if achieved without too heavy a methodological overburden, is not explanation; and (c) explanation of data, where effected, does not provide direct application or utility.
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While it may appear to do so, it does not have the “coherence” of full presence requisite in any state of actual sapient behavior. One reflects again and again about these constraints and especially the last, for they do not appear linked to any overriding naivete. I find related problems, here addressed to understanding interethnic conflict and deriving guides to alleviate that conflict, include confusion of time-scales, uncertainty about appropriate behavioral scale, fixity of semantic frame, and a distorting degree of removal from the collectivities and individuals directly involved in the conflict. That is, these “models” do not address the simultaneity (i.e., synchronicity) of both diachronic process and the immediacy of praxis. Here one cannot ignore the relevance and power of certain insights, many from the pure sciences: these include the disruptive effect of “measuring,” after Heisenberg; areas of exclusion nonetheless assumed in the paradigm, or “excluded middles,” after Russell; the limitation of every explanatory/predictive paradigm, after Godel; the limitation of language per se, after Wittgenstein; the problem of value-relativity, after many theorists in anthropology; overemphasis on the historical nexus, after Popper; and the overarching power of media, after McLuhan. There is, overall, a horrendous immediacy in acts of aggressive conflict (perhaps reflected in the curiously selective if not sparse ethnographic data base) which makes it a particularly difficult subject for dispassionate theory and/or passionate rectification, as with the cautious if not evasive approaches to death and dying traditionally in the health services. This difficulty is limned trenchantly in the Latin Requiem Mass as mars stupebit, for every proximity to human extinction is stupefying. These considerations are stated not so much out of cynicism or pessimism, as out of a harsh observed and experienced reality. Still, avenues or vectors of approach do appear in the study of intercultural conflict and aggression. These include: 1. Recognition that we are dealing with multiple domains and processes, and that this is an inherent and pervasive characteristic of the problem. These domains include the ideal, the collectivity, and the individual; and both cognitive and affective modes of process. If a program does not provide for them in its design, it becomes essentially a set of loops feeding back upon the excluded element or elements. 2. Homeostatic modelling of sociocultural process (use psychocultural if you wish, noting 1 above) is not indicated, yet we have inherited this paradigmatic pose from the past; that is, we repeatedly assume some sort of conclusive fixity and resolution inherent in our paradigms, ultimately in abeyance of the behavior from which our data are derived. This is partly the broader legacy or spin-off of positivist science, and it does not jibe well with the
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atemporal quality of cultural ideals held nonetheless by individuals who live (and fight) within a specific life-cycle, and enacted via social groups which are always transient in their membership. 3. Psychobiological determinants (i.e., ethology in the fuller sense) in intercultural conflict include individual and collective needs for immediate coping, survival, and a sense of transcendence. These needs involve some resolution of the unresolved past with some sense of balance (e.g., revenge) and some sense of continuity into a future, and are characterized by strong felt meaning. 4. Any consideration of conflict includes an influential semantic frame, and a praxis of accurately or erroneously informed human decisions. These decisions are essentially a nested cluster of enacted symbols linked to some context of meaning (semiosis), and through it to the unresolved antinomies of the past (i.e., their history) and to sapient biology (i.e., drives and needs).
ON APPLICATION Solutions to intercultural conflict, of pressing concern today in this fraught world of intemperate behavior and intem~rate technology, must address such primes rather more directly. More specifically, they demand attention to deep sapient functions which involve the dynamics of decision about conflict, and the particular sorts of ~e~~~~~gthat inform or distort these decisions. Such “deep” functions are not primarily summed from history, nor derivable by ideological dialectics, nor experienced purely by embracing praxis; and the latter two are certainly with, if not overwhelming us now. It is these deep functions which structure or metastructure (Bateson, 1972) acts and are themselves the parameters of action. It seems that they should be accessible, and that they could be utilized in more formal educative efforts. If one agrees that both “learning” and “relearning” are possible at certain critical social foci and along certain critical cultural paths, the resolution of such conflict should be possible (cf. Alland, 1972; Givens & Nettleship, 1976; Montague, 1976). Specifically toward the need for information about interethnic conflict, one would like to know more about four areas that deductively, inductively, and intuitively appear important to this writer: (a) research on ambiguity or uncertainty shared by participants immediately prior to conflict; (b) research on decisions and attendant decision-states at the very initiation of conflict; (c) research on decisions and attendant decision-states at the very cessation of conflict; and (d) research on the held ideals of leaders actively participating in conflict. I have spoken in this paper of the situation of intercultural conflict in Melanesia, of a critique of existing research on conflict and aggression, and of characteristics of our research and paradigms which skew our
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efforts with regard to dealing with interethnic conflict. Interethnic conflict is an area of research which transcends the deceptive blandness of terminology as it searches out Everyman. It will not contain itself in waiting until a new methodological vogue or better funding surfaces. It has the potential to form a global matrix of pervasive social disruption, and it should have strong stimulus for both informed and informing efforts by our professions now no longer very distant from it, in a world no longer capable of ease.
REFERENCES ALLAND, A. Jr. (1972). The human imperative. New York: Columbia University Press. ALLEN, M. (1984). Elders, chiefs, and Big Men: Authority legitimation and political evolution in Melanesia. American Ethnologist, 11, 20-41. BARKOW, J. H. (1978). Culture and sociobiology. American Anthropologist, 80, S-20. BARNES, J. A. (1962). African models in the New Guinea Highlands. Man, 62, 5-9. BATESON, G. (1972). Steps to an ecology of mind. New York: Ballantine Books. BERNDT, R. M. (1962). Excess and restraint -Social control among a New Guinea mountain people. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. BERNDT, R. M. (1964). Warfare in the New Guinea Highlands. American Anthropologist 4(2) [Special publication], 183-203. BRAIN, P. F., & BENTON, D. (1981). Multidisciplinary approaches to aggression research. Amsterdam and New York: Elsevier/North-Holland. British New Guinea. (1900-1901). Colonial reports 1900-1901 (Appendix D). London: British Colonial Service. CHOWNING, A. (1977). An introduction to the peoples and cultures of Melanesia (2nd ed.). Menlo Park, CA: Cumming. CRAPANZANO, V. (1985, March 25). A reporter at large (South-Africa-Part II). The New Yorker, pp. 52-97. EIBL-EIBESFELDT, I. (1975). Book review [Review of Love and Hate and Die !Ko-Buschmann-Gesellschaft]. Current Anthropology, 16, 151-162. EIBL-EIBESFELDT, I. (1979). The biology of peace and war-Men, animals, and aggression (C. Mosbacher, Trans.). London: Thames and Hudson. GIVENS, R. D., & NETTLESHIP, M. A. (Eds.). (1976). Discussions on war and human aggression. The Hague: Mouton. GLASS, R. M. (1968). Huli of Papua-A cognatic descent system. Cahiers de L’Homme, Nouvelle Serie VIII. Paris and The Hague: Mouton. GORDON, R. J., & MEGGITT, M. J. (1985). Low and order in the New Guinea Highlands: Encounters with Enga. Hanover and London: University Press of New England. HALLPIKE, C. R. (1977). Bloodshed and vengeance in the Papuan MountainsThe generation of conflict in Tauade society. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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HARTUP, W. W., & DE WIT, J. (1978). Origins of aggression. The Hague: Mouton. HAYS, T. E. (1976). Anthropology of the New Guinea Highlands- An anotated bibliography. New York and London: Garland. HEIDER, K. G., & GARDNER, R. G. (1969). Gardens of war: Life and death in the New Guinea Stone Age. London: Deutsch. LANGNESS, L. L. (1964). Some problems in the conceptualization of Highlands social structure. American Anthropologist, 66(4), 162-182. LORENZ, K. (1967). On aggression (M. K. Wilson, Trans.). New York: Harcourt, Brace and World. LORENZ, K. (1981). Thefoundution of ethology (K. Lorenz & R. W. Kickert, Trans.). Vienna: Springer-Verlag. MACKAL, P. K. (1979). Psychological theories of aggression. Amsterdam and New York: North-Holland. MALMBERG, T. (1980). Human territoriality. The Hague: Mouton. MARLER, P., & TERRACE, H. S. (Eds.). (1984). The biology of leurning. New York: Springer-Verlag. MARSHALL, M. (Ed.). (1982). Through a glass darkly: Beer and modernization in Papua New Guinea. (Monograph Series No. 18). Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea: Institute of Applied Social and Economic Research. MIKLQUCHO-MACLAY, N. N. (1975). New Guinea Diaries 1871-1883 (C. L. Sentinella, Trans.). Madang: Kristen Press. MONTAGUE, A. (1976). The nature of human aggression. New York: Oxford University Press. PATAKI-SCHWEIZER, K. J. (1980). A New Guinea landscape: Community, space and time in the Eastern Highlands. Anthropological studies in the Eastern Highiands of New Guinea (Vol. IV). Seattle: University of Washington Press. PATAKI-SCHWEIZER, K. J. (1987). Strongpela Meri: A female leader in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea. In L. L. Langness & T. E. Hays (Eds.), Anthropology in the High Valleys: Essays on the New Guinea Highlands in honor of K. E. Read (pp. 137-162). Novato, CA: Chandler and Sharp. READ, K. E. (1965). The High Valley. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. ROBBINS, S. (1982). Auyana: Those who held onto home. Anthropological studies in the Eastern Highlands of New Guinea (Vol. VI). Seattle: University of Washington Press. SCHIEFFELIN, E. L. (1983). Anger and shame in the tropical forest: On affect as a cultural system in Papua New Guinea. Ethos, 11, 181-191. SCHILTZ, M. (1984, September). War, peace and the exercise of power: Perspectives on society and the state in the New Guinea Highlands. Paper presented at the Australian Anthropological Society Annual Conference, Sydney. SILLITOE, P. (1978). Big men and war in New Guinea. Man, 13, 252-271. SINGER, M. (1980). Signs of the self: An exploration in semiotic anthropology. American Anthropologist, 82, 485507. THOMSON, J. P. (1892). British New Guinea. London: George Phillips and Son.
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TINBERGEN, N. (1968). On war and peace in animals and men. Science, 160(3835), 1411-1418. VAYDA, A. P. (1976). War in ecological perspective: Persistence, change, and adaptive processes in three Oceanic societies. New York: Plenum. WAGNER, R. (1977). Scientific and indigenous Papua conceptualizations of the innate: A semiotic critique of the ecological perspective. In T. Bayliss-Smith & R. Feachem (Eds.), Subsistence and survival-Rural ecology in the Pacific. London: Academic Press. WATSON, J. B. (1973). Tairora: The politics of despotism in a small society. In R. M. Berndt & P. Lawrence (Eds.), Politics in New Guinea. Perth: University of Western Australia Press; Seattle: University of Washington Press.
ABSTRACT
TRANSLATIONS
L’amlyse formellecks cmnflitset cks aggressions @x%n~~~simprtantsetcritiques dsla oonditionhunains exigeme bass ck &&enaa danslesfaits du amprtement. Un tel Qbnent &aract&istiqusdansle a.n~prtenent c&s culturesh laP!!aresieestla~&entation prticuli&eck uxtains siqes agressif,qui s'exprimelors &as rencmntres entreles groups. Elle existesur Q diffkentsniveauxsodaw. Ch discuteles as~ctse'thnogapliquesetdoslogiquesainsiqreles causes pssihles ck da arnprtenentculturellenent sanctiork. On soulignela-valeur d'ureappoche &halogiqueeton popse quelquasthenesde redxr&e. (author-su@isdabstract)
El ardlisis formal&al ax3flictoyla agesidnentre srulxxi &nicos rquiere wicbsncia 0’ data baaada en axnportamientos que reflejenesteaspectotandxisivockla axrdici~hunans. una c3racteristic3 de1 ~nglaneracbde culturasdemninacbs melanasiasesmtip prticularda afixmacidn popiaque se manifestaba y axkinGa siencbexpresadaen axrflictos inter&nioxavirxxmuales&laescalasocial, pr ejenploenNuwa Guirma. Enestemanuscritose discutenlaetxxjrafia, la ecologiay otrasrazonssqurpdieranexplicareste axnprtxnniento tanaoa~& en_esasculturas.Laimprtancia de1 pmto da vista etoldgia, es sermtadayse sugierentc$iODs pra iwzstigacionesfuturas. (author-suppliedabstract)