Dispute settlement in New Guinea: a comparative study

Abstract

This study is an attempt to describe, define, and interpret some of the dominant patterns of dispute settlement among a number of New Guinea societies. In the main, only those disputes which take place within the political and territorial unit, referred to herein as a 'parish', have been considered. Questions pertaining to the legal aspects of the settlement processes are discussed throughout the thesis, in order to gain a better understanding of the way power and authority, and self-help mechanisms, operate in the indigenous systems of these communities. To this end not only the writings and ideas of other anthropologists, but those from the sociology of law and social conflict studies have been freely drawn upon. There have as yet been no systematic comparative studies on dispute settlement in New Guinea and this thesis therefore endeavours to elicit the broad patterns of similarity, rather than enumerate the many differences, which characterize these diverse social systems so as to both provide a basis for, and suggest possible areas in which, future research might he undertaken.