ABSTRACT
As is the case in many places in Oceania (cf. Brady 1976; Carroll 1970), adoption is common on Wogeo Island in Papua New Guinea.1 In some villages as many as half of the inhabitants are adopted. Ian Hogbin (1935/36), who conducted anthropological research on the island in 1934 and 1948, accounted for the numerous adoptions by a high degree of infertility and the fact that many young girls had children before marriage. In the 1990s it was still the case that many couples were infertile and many girls had children without being married, but my contention is that adoption in Wogeo is not necessarily, and not even primarily, about childlessness or fatherlessness. Single women and couples with biological children also adopt, and the explanations for these adoptions need to be sought elsewhere. As much as providing children to infertile couples, and parents to children without fathers, adoption is a way of creating continuity and of commemorating historical events. Adoption can secure alliances and ease conflict-ridden relationships; it is a means of concealing a person’s matrilineal identity and of manipulating kinship relations in order to gain power and influence.
