Sheep, Coffee Prices, and Ceremonial Exchange in Papua New Guinea

Abstract

hesitance of villagers to adopt commercial activities. Explanations for this behavior vary. Adherents of the modernization school believe that cultural constraints like religious beliefs, limited aspirations, fear of envy, and conservatism are the dominant obstacles to diffusion of cash-earning endeavors among rural cultivators.1 Another set of explanations emphasizes the rationality of villagers and external political-economic forces. According to this interpretation, rural cultivators hesitate to adopt commercial ventures because of constraints like economic risk, seasonal labor shortages, limited availability of land, exploitative governmental policies, low commodity prices, minimal incomes, and insecure tenure.2 This interpretation is correct both in its assessment of the fundamental importance of economic and politicaleconomic factors and in the assertion that the cultural factors stressed by the modernization school have not been the significant constraint to the diffusion of commercial activities. An unfortunate result of this critique is the tendency of persons who emphasize political-economic factors to relegate cultural ones to a minor explanatory role. The deemphasis of cultural variables is partly a reaction against their portrayal as persistent, static, and powerful barriers independent of macrolevel political-economic forces by the modernization school.