ABSTRACT
Melanesia’s various polities present a case study in what happens when an entire institution of civil society – a legal system – is introduced, initially for the purpose of monitoring and controlling relationships between colonisers and colonised, and later for purposes associated with state-building. The haphazard introduction of the concept of ‘the law’, largely as an adjunct to the ‘pacification’ of Melanesians in the interests of colonial governance, established the conditions for this concept to be appropriated and deployed in extremely diverse ways by Melanesians. The law became a background against which any number of social and political innovations could be foregrounded. Law offers a case in point: the concept of law and the techniques of legal systems found ready purchase among Melanesian peoples interested in borrowing and adapting ‘the legal’ as a method for conducting their social relationships. The concept of kastom has informed legal innovation, and been utilised as a potentially unifying national understanding of socio-political organisation.
