(Re?)Discovering Chiefs: traditional authority and the restructuring of local-level government in Papua New Guinea

Abstract

In the 1960s and 1970s, what most people knew - or at least thought they knew - about Papua New Guinea's 'traditional' societies was that they were essentially egalitarian: excepting a few societies which possessed hereditarial chieftaincies, leadership was typically by 'bigmen', who achieved their status through competition, and community decision making was predominantly consensual. Although challenged by a number of scholars from the mid 1970's, this stereotypical view still has a good deal of currency. In recent years, however, stimulated by a series of reviews of the provincial government system and attempts to nurture new local-level political structures, it has come under increasing challenge within Papua New Guinea. In the mid 1990s people are (re)discovering chiefs on a wide front and are looking to traditional 'chiefly' structures as part of a move towards more extensive political decentralization. this paper looks briefly at the discussion of traditional authority in the anthropological literature, examines the emerging political discourse on 'chiefs' within Papua New Guinea, and comments on its contemporary political significance.