ABSTRACT
The Mekeo in the lowlands of Papua New Guinea have become wealthy on growing the ‘Mekeo gold’ of betel nut for the urban market in Port Moresby. 1 The increased incomes have lead to an extension and modernisation of the formal dress codes marking a person’s position in the shifting social relations that he, and even more so she, is part of. Some of the clothes are locally referred to as ‘modern’, for example volleyball outfits, bachelors’ fashion clothes, women’s clan uniforms and young girls’ plastic skirts for disco dancing. Others are described as ancestral ‘custom’, for example, dancing costumes made of feathers, dog’s teeth and shells. The very classification of things as being either modern or traditional in itself indicates a modern ideology, in which time equals change and the future is contrasted to the past. However, for the Mekeo, modernity (the present/future) does not necessarily imply a potential loss of tradition (the past). Rather than countering or threatening ancestral tradition, objects of modernity and development are regarded as complements to and, indeed, the fulfilment of tradition.
