Introduction

The clan and village which were once key units in the political system have lost much of their political significance after nearly a century of contact with Europeans. The kind of relationship which exists between villages is most important to the development of Papua New Guinea. Whatever form future governments take, they will all require some measure of integration between small traditional political units, in the case of Madang, villages. The conventional anthropological study of a single village was inadequate as an approach to this problem, since it was essential to examine relations between villages. A final source for villages other than Kauris was those institutions, such as church, local government council and cooperative, in which many other if not all villages participated. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.