Comment on Maclean’s ‘Globalization and bridewealth rhetoric’

Abstract

Maclean's analysis of the dynamics of cultural continuity among the Maring provides an intriguing interpretation of forms of socio-economic activity that are internally conservative while simultaneously determined by external forces. In many respects, it is an attempt to deal with the problem that has long vexed anthropologists who want to acknowledge the ways that global forces affect marginal societies and their cultural activities. His subject is that classic anthropological problem, one of description and analysis?what constitutes the integrity of these small-scale groups whose ways of life can often appear disconnected from, even when they are demonstrably engaged with, the global? In accepting Lipuma's argument about 'cosmological integrity' and successfully demonstrating the ways that this is rhetorically represented in a specific bridewealth exchange, he has to my mind made a stronger case for Maring marginality than he has for its articulation with global forces. In many respects, the discussion of the demise of the civic project and the retreat to closed, internally construed and constructed marriages builds a picture of dislocation from the state?an effect, as Maclean briefly argues, of the disintegration of state services and concomitant social disorder. The relationship between, for instance, global structural adjustment policies and the failures of Papua New Guinea's government to govern effectively needs at least as much description and interpre? tation as the bridewealth exchange to carry the argument about the significance of the global in this process. In his concluding section, he refers to the 'global transformations of capital' and suggests that the effects of these processes are clearly discernible in Papua New Guinea. But which ones? What are the specific effects of globalization in Papua New Guinea? The disruptions in Maring engagement with the global economy are clear?but identified as due to coffee blight, drought and the failures of government at every level.