Wulukum: land, livelihood and change in a New Guinea village

Abstract

In the past, as Ester Boserup points out Boserup E. The Conditions of Agricultural Growth, George Allen and Unwin, 1965, page 116, geographers have tended to explain the existence of land use systems in the terms of the environment in which they were found. The conditioning factors in such environments were presumed to be relatively unchanging. As a result of this, such systems of agriculture were assumed to be permanent features of the region being studied. Thus, at times, geographers have been unwilling to apply their particular methods of study to the problems of change in agriculture under the conditions of population growth and European influence. But as pointed out below, geographers do have a contribution to make to this field, if they consider all aspects of the interaction of culture with the environment. Like the geographer, both the anthropologist and the economist can claim to study the ways in which human groups make use of their physical environment. But the approach of the geographer is, in some respects, more unwieldy than that of the anthropologist or the economist. The geographer stresses the importance of both the human group and the environment. He is, therefore, careful to examine both these aspects and also to give a clear description of the inter-relationships of the two. He recognises, for example, that a change in the system of land use alters not only the social organisation of the society but also the relationships in the physical environment. This change in turn makes some later changes more likely than others.