Society as Organized Flow: The Tairora Case

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Abstract
Of roughly twenty years' standing, the analysis of Central Highland New Guinea social systems remains inconclusive. Problematical features basic to these (and perhaps other) social systems have received descriptive cachets like "looseness," "openness," and "flexibility," suggestive of regional peculiarity--even anomaly--but bereft of explanatory value. The significance of intermittent, major realignment of local groups through migration tends to be overlooked. Conventional analytical perspectives of group composition, marriage, descent, and residence stress the statics of groups-on-the-ground. The present paper by contrast emphasizes the organized flow of personnel in space and time. As a case in point, the magnitude of migration en bloc in Tairora society is estimated and a migration-recruitment model outlined. Several theoretical problems arising from this view of Tairora society are listed, and one of them, the recurrent fission of kinsmen and the recruitment of outsiders, is examined for some of its wider implications.

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