ABSTRACT
The social system in western New Britain, as in many other areas of Papua New Guinea, was characterized by the multiplicity of kin links that people could utilize to claim land or set up exchange partnerships. People’s motivation to engage in exchange expanded as other opportunities for social advancement declined. The production and use of objects is through a series of forms of practical action which have spatial extent in that they are distributed across the landscape in various ways, temporal pattern and social intensity. Patterns of action needed to make or use objects were not just about physical action in the world, but were means of provisioning and animating social relations. The attachments and connections they did make use of derive from their own patterns of action during their lives, allowing them to construct their own social universe through action, which was larger or smaller, more or less intense, depending on their own energy and ambition.
