Wars of Dependence: Contested Histories Among Tolai People of Papua New Guinea

Abstract

In this article, I look at the ways in which a number of forms of providing for a livelihood have increased in importance in the region in this period and explore the ways in which they have created the possibility for new ascriptions of dependence and independence. I explore these issue with particular reference to Tolai people of Papua New Guinea's East New Britain province, where the wealth of ethnographic and archival material going back many decades provides the possibility for a particularly rich and deep historical perspective. Wage labour has increased in importance for many communities in the past few decades. Similarly, resource extraction and cash-cropping have also expanded in scale and importance in many parts of the region in recent decades. I argue that shifting evaluations of dependence come in and out of vision in relationship to these trends and these shifting evaluations are themselves central components of the construction of new hierarchies and relations of dependence.