Introduction

Abstract

With the increasing complexity and pace of processes of change in social contexts around the world, anthropologists have returned to classic questions regarding tradition and modernity, viewing these in a different way from the earlier literature. The newer viewpoint sees tradition as a constantly shifting, rather than fixed, phenomenon, and modernity as a pluralizing rather than homogenizing process. Historical change and variability are thus the hallmarks of this new perspective in which scholars view the rhetorical deployment of terms such as “tradition” and “modernity” as attempts that people themselves initiate to understand and make use of their historical experiences. In doing so, people may pick on and rework a part of their overall cultural repertoire in order to express their current sense of identity or to adjust to a specific set of changes in their lives. This book explores the efforts of Duna-speaking people in the Aluni Valley of the Southern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea to achieve such an adjustment.