Post-Colonial Trajectories of Violence and Socia Control Among Gebusi of Papua New Guinea

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This project supports the research of a cultural anthropologist from Emory University, studying changing patterns of violence, social control and government influence among a traditional tribal society of Papua New Guinea. Using a baseline of data collected by the investigator in 1980, the project provides a rigorous longitudinal analysis of conflict and dispute mediation across the transition to fully post-colonial conditions among a rainforest population with an extremely high rate of violence. Observed changes in sorcery inquests, village moots and court cases will be complemented by empirical data based on current census information and long-term dispute profiles. Updating genealogies from a 1982 sample of 300 persons will enable systematic analysis of the causes and consequences of about 100 deaths projected to have occurred in the past 15 years. These mortality data and the case histories drawn form them will be used to calculate changes in homicide rate, the changing distribution of violence by age, sex, perpetrator/victim relation, coresidence, and other causes of violence. The research will illuminate processes of cultural and political change that affect violence and attempts at social control in many post-colonial contexts. The information to be gathered will advance our understanding of larger issues about local compliance with, tacit subversion of, or active resistance against post-colonial administrations. The general processes analyzed here will also shed light on violence patterns in local neighborhoods in industrialized countries.