Socio-Ecological Change Among the Fore of New Guinea [and Comments and Replies]

Documenting Human Nature: E. Richard Sorenson and the National Anthropological Film Center, 1965–1980

“…He most thoroughly explored the different analytical facets of this technique in his 1976 monograph, The Edge of the Forest . In it, he considered how the introduction of the sweet potato had come to alter the physical and cultural landscape of the region through what he described in an earlier publication as a chain of “interdependent ecological, demographic, and social developments” (Sorenson, , p. 349). To support his argument, Sorenson used images taken from his film records to compare the behaviors of two groups of Fore—one in the north and a more isolated group living in the south—over a seven‐year period.…”

“…First, he witnessed how the presence of roads altered physical movements, as many hunters began to follow the roads instead of traveling freely through the forests (Sorenson, , p. 227). He then observed how entire communities soon set up their hamlets to be closer to the roads, which in turn brought them nearer to new resources and tools (Sorenson, , p. 366). Tools such as steel axes accelerated southern Fore agriculture, making it possible to grow not only sweet potatoes, but also new crops such as coffee (Sorenson, , p. 370; , p. 230).…”

“…He then observed how entire communities soon set up their hamlets to be closer to the roads, which in turn brought them nearer to new resources and tools (Sorenson, , p. 366). Tools such as steel axes accelerated southern Fore agriculture, making it possible to grow not only sweet potatoes, but also new crops such as coffee (Sorenson, , p. 370; , p. 230). Closer proximity to government camps also had a dramatic effect on the behavior of Fore children, who now showed a preference for organized games and team sports instead of the exploratory free play characteristic of previous generations (Sorenson, , p. 241).…”

Conflict, Justice, and the Stranger-King Indigenous Roots of Colonial Rule in Indonesia and Elsewhere

“…72 Indeed, the aborigines of Taiwan appear generally to have been willing subjects. Many submitted of their own accord, and often readily, to Dutch 71 Berndt 1953: 117-18;Sorensen 1972: 360, 362. Diamond (1998 uses an account of high homicide rates among another New Guinea tribal people to illustrate his general argument that the control of violence has been 'a big and underappreciated advantage of centralized societies over noncentralized ones' in human history and a key reason for 'the acceptance of centralized authority as tribal societies grew larger'.…”

Nuaulu Settlement and Ecology

“…As Brown and Brookfield (1967: 119) have pointed out, there have been very few studies of a particular society which have taken the pattern of settlement as the central point of enquiry. Exceptions to this tradition include the work of Leach (1961) andOrenstein (1965), emphasizing the positive moulding effect of micro-ecology on social relationships in hydraulic societies; that of Conklin ( : 2, 1968, with his insistence on the integration of subsistence activities into the overall socio-cultural matrix; the work of Brookfield and Brown (1963) on land adequacy, agriculture and group territories; Sorenson (1972) on a specifically ecological study of settlement patterns; and even, to some extent, the treatment of settlements as visible referents of cosmology and structural realities of sociallife apparent in the work of Lévi-Strauss (1956). And then there are the two sources which I have selected as being of particular theoretical interest, the work of Frake and Barth on different but related aspects of generative analysis.…”