ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with the construction and maintenance of group identity in modern society in Papua New Guinea, and the occasions during which boundaries that distinguish one group from others would be defined. The notion of identity would not be problematic for anthropologists only, but for people in Melanesia also, where concepts belonging to the indigenous culture are constantly challenged by extremely rapid and often radical social and political changes. Parkinson divided the people living in Manus Province into three ethnic groups, the Titan, the Matankor and the Usiai. The notion of group in Melanesian society is problematic, since as a rule ‘the basic structures of these societies are not groups, but relations of groups’. Sports and gambling are not merely leisure activities, nor do they serve as outlets for feelings no longer accepted by society, but represent aspects of the culture in which they are performed.
