Peace-Making and the Imagination by Andrew Strathern

Author:Andrew Strathern
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Queensland Press
Published: 2013-06-13T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

The problems of peace-

makers: intermediate

sovereigns

Introduction

This chapter discusses further issues of peace-making in Hagen, and goes on to examine relations between ‘intermediate sovereign’ groups and the state in Papua New Guinea. The inter-group patterns of relations in Hagen were disrupted by the imposition of colonial control. The resulting problems appear in events and processes within the post-colonial state. The state’s sovereignty is contested at times of crisis both by separatist or micro-nationalist movements and by individual clan groups who occasionally oppose state control over land, forestry or mining resources. Compensation issues run through each of the historical periods considered, from the pre-colonial to the present. Attempts by state authorities to impose solutions by force or to negotiate with groups are construed as models of ways in which states may approach ‘intermediate sovereign’ groups. Settlements made with such groups are likely to work only if they satisfy the group’s wishes at multiple levels. This chapter, therefore, looks at peace-making practices via the concept of ‘intermediate sovereign’ in political fields. We use the Hagen area for our primary examples, but present some of the propositions derived from study in that area in more general, or generalisable, form. The argument of the chapter is thus continuous with previous chapters while seeking to place the materials in broader contexts.

Inter-group relations and sovereignty

One branch of contemporary anthropology concentrates on historical change and narratives of change. However, our knowledge of how political groups operated in pre-colonial contexts is complicated by the fact that most actual observations began in colonial times. With this caveat in mind, it is worthwhile to begin by recapitulating how anthropologists studying parts of Africa, ‘Melanesia’ and elsewhere have modelled these societies through concepts of ‘ordered anarchy’ and ‘segmentary political systems’ arising out of British social anthropology (see Evans-Pritchard 1940, pp. 139–91, for more information on these concepts). For the purposes of this chapter, an initial comparison between inter-group relations and sovereignty is necessary. In such a comparison, tribes and clans may be seen as comparable to sovereign groups between which international relations existed (see, for example, Watson 1983).1 The comparison is, of course, imperfect. We are not arguing that such groups saw themselves entirely as ‘sovereignties’. In the first place, they were not hierarchically organised as clearly bounded entities with a formalised politico-legal structure. Nevertheless, an analogy of this kind is useful for understanding how states and intermediate sovereigns interact. Within a wider ethnic or linguistic group, individual major political units existed, numbering from several hundred to several thousand persons. These groups could combine for war against other groups and could also collaborate in order to bring about peace. Group leaders orchestrated such collective processes through exhortations of solidarity and appeals to self-interest. While we cannot speak of ‘government’ within their units, we can speak of them as presenting a united front to outsiders and as not recognising authorised control by any political power beyond that within their own group.

How, then, did international relations proceed between groups of this kind? Such groups

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