Seagulls Don't Fly into the Bush: Cultural Identity and Development in Melanesia

Seagulls Don't Fly Into the Bush explores cultural values and processes in describing and analyzing how Mandok Islanders of the Siassi Islands, Papua New Guinea, understood, evaluated, and either accepted or rejected selected key "development projects" over one hundred years of European contact, colonial and post-colonial domination. Using detailed ethnographic description and analysis, Pomponio demonstrates the extent to which Mandok personal and cultural identity revolved around their self-definition as mobile, maritime middlemen who fished, whereas most colonial and post-colonial government, mission and school officials treated them as fisher folk who traded. The difference involved the symbolic and religious importance of the sea and of middleman trade, both of which pervade their epic legend of Namor. The book begins with this sacred legend, for it is here that the core values of Mandok culture are described and explained. Later chapters relate this creation legend to everyday and ritual life on Mandok. Readers will discover the importance of firstborns as "persons" par excellence, the importance and conception of "place" as a distinctly maritime concept, the importance of middleman trade in creating and maintaining intercultural kinship and sociopolitical systems, and ways in which all of these values influenced their actual participation in "development," which most Mandok understood to mean "personal access to cash." The minimal use of jargon, the inclusion of illustrative photo-graphs, maps and charts, and a comprehensive glossary make this book an excellent case study for courses on cultural anthropology, Oceania, religion, economic development, symbolic anthropology, culture change, colonial and post-colonial studies, and global studies.