This article is about the beginning of time scarcity as a persisting and pervasive problem in a Papua New Guinea village.' I argue that to conceive of this process as merely a matter of changes in the ratio of time-supply and time-demand would be t o ignore the nature of indigenous cultural reality and would obscure a more complex process of temporal reorientation in which changing relations of authority play a key part. I focus on the mutually determining relationship of changing ways of thinking about and experiencing time and changing forms of authority. This relationship is part of a larger process of radical change in political economy and resistance t o such change.I suggest that new structures of authority help mediate new forms of temporal behavior and new ways of thinking about time t o Koragur villagers. Such new ideas may provide a rationale for accepting new impositions of authority; but, lack of socialization into Western industrial-style temporal concepts is both a cause of and a manifestation of resistance to these impositions. Both these new impositions of authority and the new temporal concepts are integral parts of a radically new form of political economy-one that is different in the quality of the social relations that comprise it and not simply in the quantity of demands that it places on people's temporal resources.In aid of this argument I comment on the kinds of assumptions about time scarcity that inform a great deal of recent social science. I take the position that Western industrial-style time scarcity, as a condition of sociocultural systems or as a dimension of individual exThis article argues that the development of perceptions that time is scarce is not simply the result of increases in the quantity of demand for a finite supply of time. Rather, in Koragur Village, Papua New Guinea, i t is part of the larger process of incorporation into a capitalist political economy. The imposition of authoritative control over temporal conduct b y external authorities and by new kinds of local leaders, together with the spreadof the idea that time is scarce, are seen as mutually determining moments of this process of incorporation.Villagers who retain indigenous temporal orientations see the unwelcome imposition of authority where a Western observer would see "time scarcity." These perceptions by villagers are, in a sense, more accurate than those of more acculturated individuals. Moreover, the process of acquiring industrial capitalist modes of thinking about, and experiencing, time is inseparable from struggles over the acceptance of new kinds of relations of authority. [temporal orientations, scarcity, economizing, leadership, peripheral capitalism]
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We owe our greatest debt to several generations of the people of Manus Province, Papua New Guinea, which was the Manus District of the United Nations Trust Territory of Papua and New Guinea when the research for this book began. Too many people have contributed to name individuals. Those named in the book (we do not use pseudonyms) account for only some of the major contributors. We also would be staggeringly remiss not to thank Margaret Mead. In this book we take issue with some of her writings on Manus and Paliau, but we also draw on her findings. Above all, there would have been no book at all if she had not introduced Theodore Schwartz to Manus in 1953.We are deeply grateful to our spouses, Shirley Otis (Theodore Schwartz) and Jana Goldman (Michael French Smith). Aside from the encouragement and material support they have provided, they have put up with a lot of aggravation. We would not want to have been our own roommates during the many days and nights we each obsessed about the book. In Del Mar, California, Cecelia Gomez and Arlene Olivarria made it possible for us to swan about being scholars without thinking whence our next meals or other creature comforts were coming.We received an important early grant from Mary Catherine Bateson and the Institute for Intercultural Studies. As we continued, Steve and Paula Mae Schwartz made it possible for Smith to travel coast to coast to work with Schwartz as often as necessary without worrying about the expense. Adan Schwartz covered most of the costs of preparing the completed manuscript for publication, with help from Steve and Paula Mae.Aletta Biersack proved herself a colleague of unparalleled endurance. She read several drafts of each chapter and gave us detailed and thoughtful comments. Anything, however, that readers may find amiss with the final LIkE FIREx product is our fault alone, and probably something Aletta warned us about. Ton Otto, a leading scholar of things Manusian, gave us valuable comments on the penultimate draft of the book.10 Landes (2011: 31-6) identifies several types of apocalyptic millenarianism. Recognising a single general type, however, suffices for our purposes. 11 Landes emphasises this point throughout his 2011 work Heaven on Earth: The Varieties of the Millennial Experience; see especially pages 60-1 and 144-5. 17 See Worsley (1968Worsley ( [1957) and Trompf (1994Trompf ( , 1991. 18 Anthropologists have also produced a number of valuable studies of instances of Melanesian millenarianism that are not cargo-centric, among them Biersack (2013, 2011a, 2011b, 1991), Robbins (2004a), and. 19 In the process, Lindstrom (1993a: 51) seriously misconstrues Schwartz's thoughts on cargo cults and millenarianism.22 In Tok Pisin (the lingua franca in which the conversation took place, which we describe in Chapter 2): Mi tokim tok olsem, na husat moa i ken mekim gutpela toktok long olgeta man long worl? Em Yesus tasol! Em i man bilong gutpela toktok. Mi tok, mi, mi Yesus bilong yupela. Mi Yesus bilong yupela mi tokim ol. 23 In Tok Pisin: Mi tok lo...
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