ABSTRACT
This chapter returns to the central problem of the study outlined in Chapter 1: how Nuaulu society has proved to be resilient over a period of 50 years despite evident environmental, economic and sociopolitical challenges. An account is provided of demographic changes and settlement growth, and of contextual forces, including politico-economic shifts at a national level. It is explained how Nuaulu have managed (both serendipitously and self-consciously) to use these changing circumstances to their advantage, achieve a significant degree of independent territorial administration, including a ‘re-invention’ of the pre-1880 political dispensation, while seeking the material benefits of modernization. This ‘traditionalist pathway to modernity’ has only been possible through clan vitality and effective social reproduction. The chapter also overviews the Nuaulu system by which clans ensure biological reproduction, while the sacred houses which comprise them (unable to biologically reproduce themselves) engage in ritual exchanges that ensure the social continuity of the clan. The Nuaulu bilateral model and pattern of clan alliances is compared with the more widespread reports of asymmetric cross-cousin marriage in eastern Indonesia and the rather different patterns of alliance with which it is associated. The chapter concludes by reiterating the observation that biological reproduction and social reproduction are mutually reinforcing but different, and that the social arrangements by which these are achieved have adopted a wide variety of forms, contingent on local historical circumstances. The typologies associated with conventional comparative anthropology can sometimes obscure these underlying realities.
