The Abelam people are a tribe of horticulturalists in New Guinea who are famous for their artwork and for their majestic, towering spirit houses that dominate village skylines. They are also well-known for growing and exchanging huge ceremonial yams that often exceed 3 meters (10 feet) in length. I have written about how yam beliefs act to organize and synchronize many aspects of their lives. Anthropologists and food studies scientists are interested in how foods are used by people in non-nutritive, symbolic and expressive ways, and the Abelam provide a good example of how food helps to build social identities.

Like many other peoples of New Guinea, the Abelam traditionally have an egalitarian social organization, lacking formal political offices and social hierarchies. How do they maintain social order with no police, courts, judges or jails? They have very rich ceremonial and social lives. How do they organize their activities without formal political or religious leaders?

In some parts of the Pacific islands, most notably in eastern Polynesia, there are complex chiefdoms with formal leaders who orchestrate public works. How and why did these chiefdoms arise? Why didn’t they develop in the highlands of New Guinea, which has dense populations based on agricultural intensification and other characteristics generally associated with the growth of social differentiation?

I have had a special relationship with the Abelam for over forty years. I’ve described their conflict management techniques in my PhD thesis, studied their social organization, worked on legal development projects to establish Village Courts (which to blend together introduced and customary legal systems) in their territory, and have assisted in their efforts to achieve sustainable economic development.

Key Publications:
Scaglion, Richard. "Abelam: Giant Yams and Cycles of Sex, Warfare and Ritual." In Discovering Anthropology: Researchers at Work- Cultural Anthropology. C.R. Ember and M. Ember (eds.), pp. 21-31. Pearson Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2007.

Scaglion, Richard. “Multiple Voices, Multiple Truths: Labour Recruitment in the Sepik Foothills of German New Guinea.” The Journal of Pacific History 42(3):345-360, 2007.

Scaglion, Richard. “From Anthropologist to Government Officer and Back Again.” In Anthropology and Consultancy: Issues and Debates. P. J. Stewart and A. Strathern (eds.), pp. 46-62. Berghahan Press, Oxford, 2005. (reprinted from Social Analysis).

Scaglion, Richard. "Juxtaposed Narratives: A New Guinea Big Man Encounters the Colonial Process." In In Colonial New Guinea: Anthropological Perspectives. N. McPherson (ed.), pp. 151-170. ASAO Monograph Series No. 19, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, 2001.

 
 
     
 
 

Another of my ongoing interests is in legal development in the Pacific islands. My PhD research (1974-76) focused on conflict management strategies among the Abelam people of Papua New Guinea. From 1979-83 I was Director of Customary Law for the Law Reform Commission of Papua New Guinea. In post-independence PNG, I was charged with helping to integrate the customary laws of PNG’s more than 700 tribal groups with a national legal system based on introduced Australian law. I continue to conduct research on legal pluralism in the Pacific Islands and to study how traditional practices and customs can be integrated into unified and equitable national legal systems throughout the region.

Key Publications:
Scaglion, Richard. "Law." In The Pacific Islands: Environment & Society (second edition). M. Rapaport (ed.), University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 2012.

Scaglion, Richard. “From Anthropologist to Government Officer and Back Again.” In Anthropology and Consultancy: Issues and Debates. P. J. Stewart and A. Strathern (eds.), pp. 46-62. Berghahan Press, Oxford, 2005. (reprinted from Social Analysis).

Scaglion, Richard. “Legal Pluralism in Pacific Island Societies” In Globalization and Culture Change in the Pacific Islands. V. Lockwood (ed.), pp. 86-101. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2004.

 
   

I have longstanding interests in the field of human ecology, which investigates the complex relationship between people and their environments. Ecological anthropology explores how culture influences the dynamic interactions between human populations and the ecosystems in their habitat through time. Among other research tools, human ecologists employ ethnoecology, which is a paradigm that explores how indigenous people conceive of environmental phenomena. Often, this involves research about indigenous classification schemes about things like soil types, plants, and animals, which intersects with my interests in food studies and ethnobotany. Ultimately, I seek to understand how sustainable economic development can be accomplished by taking into account indigenous views of the environment.

Key Publications:
Scaglion, Richard. “Maori Warfare: Prefiguring Contemporary Directions in Ecological Science.” In Against the Grain: The Vayda Tradition in Human Ecology and Ecological Anthropology. B. Walters, B. J. McCay, P. West and S. Lees (eds.), pp. 27-39. Altamira Press, Lanham, MD, 2008.

Plotnicov, Leonard and Richard Scaglion (eds.) The Globalization of Food. Waveland Press, Prospect Heights, IL, 2002. ISBN 1-57766-257-1.

 



Photo: M. Roman