The Transformation of Use-Rights: A Comparison of Two Papua New Guinean Societies

Use and ownership of land and resources in two related societies of lowland Papua New Guinea are shown to covary with residence, gender, marriage, kinship, and local understandings of rights that are accorded by either conventions of practice or conventions of inheritance. We argue that the articulation of these material and social relations is predicated on the potential for a lack of congruence between discourse and behavior. Differences between the societies, and changes observed in one of them, inform a model of the transformation of use-rights in nonhierarchical and communally based systems. Under that model, an ideal of free access gives way to an ideal of restraint, an expectation that permission will be sought gives way to a requirement that an invitation be offered, and an understanding that women are exchanged in marriage gives way to an understanding that it is both women and their rights to use land and resources that are exchanged.