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BIG-MEN AND BUSINESS THE EAST-WEST CENTER—formally known as “The Center for Cultural and Technical Interchange Be- tween East and West”—was established in Hawaii by the United States Congress in 1960. As a national educational institution in cooperation with the University of Hawaii, the Center has the mandated goal “to promote better relations and understanding between the United States and the nations of Asia and the Pacific through cooperative study, training, and research.” Each year about 2,000 men and women from the United States and some 40 countries and territories of Asia and the Pa- cific area work and study together with a multinational East- West Center staff in wide-ranging programs dealing with problems of mutual East-West concern. Participants are sup- ported by federal scholarships and grants, supplemented in some fields by contributions from Asian/Pacific governments and private foundations. Center programs are conducted by the East-West Communication Institute, the East-West Culture Learning In- stitute, the East-West Food Institute, the East-West Population Institute, and the East-West Technology and Development In- stitute. Open Grants are awarded to provide scope for educa- tional and research innovation, including a program in human- ities and the arts. East-West Center Books are published by the University Press of Hawaii to further the Center’s aims and programs. Big-Men and Business Entrepreneurship and Economic Growth in the New Guinea Highlands Ben R. Finney Foreword by Douglas L. Oliver Open Access edition funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities / Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program. Licensed under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 In- ternational (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits readers to freely download and share the work in print or electronic format for non-commercial purposes, so long as credit is given to the author. Derivative works and commercial uses require per- mission from the publisher. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. The Cre- ative Commons license described above does not apply to any material that is separately copyrighted. Open Access ISBNs: 9780824880101 (PDF) 9780824880118 (EPUB) This version created: 16 May, 2019 Please visit www.hawaiiopen.org for more Open Access works from University of Hawai‘i Press. Copyright © 1973 by The University Press of Hawaii All rights reserved Contents Foreword vii Preface ix Acknowledgments xix 1 A Stone Age Setting 1 2 Europeans Arrive 19 3 Money and Cash Crops 38 4 Gorokan Economic Growth 56 5 Business Leaders 81 6 Preadaption, Preconditions, and Cargo Cults 120 7 Problems and Prospects 142 Notes 177 Bibliography 187 Plates 204 vi Foreword Dr. Finney’s book is an important contribution to a very crucial debate: What are the factors that assist, or obstruct, economic development in “undeveloped” countries? By inserting the role of the local entrepreneur into the debate—a role which has been overlooked by most “development” economists—the author per- forms a valuable service, theoretically and practically. Focus on the local entrepreneur has lately begun to assume even greater importance as result of the higher priority that some economists and some intellectual leaders in undeveloped countries are now proposing to assign to small-scale rural economic development (in place of or complementary to the priority assigned large- scale and mainly foreign-controlled enterprise). Specifically, the book is a study of the entry of a segment of New Guineans into the market economy introduced into the area by Europeans. The New Guineans in question, the people of the Goroka area in the Eastern Highlands, are notable for having made this entry quickly, successfully, and seemingly painlessly—in contrast to many other Pacific islanders. The author examines various possible explanations for this success, and focuses on the activities of the most successful entrepre- neurs among the Gorokans in order to obtain his own data. His conclusion is that two factors were mainly responsible for the remarkable development by the Gorokans: the nature of the traditional culture (which “preadapted” the people to money- making), and the favorable natural and colonial environment of the area. He buttresses his argument by comparing the Gorokans with other New Guinean peoples who either have, or have not, made a success in the new market economy. vii Foreword His underlying assumption is that all or most New Guinea peoples are “preadapted” by their cultures to market-economy activities, but his conclusion is that only those who enjoy fa- vorable natural environments, and whose history of contact with Europeans has been supportive, have been successful. Dr. Finney brings considerable regional experience and field research skill to this investigation. He has traveled and ob- served widely throughout the Pacific islands, and his compar- ative study of two Tahitian communities—one made up of cash- cropping rural “peasants” and the other of suburban wage la- borers—has been widely acclaimed. More recently his current work at the Technology and Development Institute of the East- West Center of the University of Hawaii adds even more to his knowledge and insights about this hitherto neglected domain of “modernization.” DOUGLAS L. OLIVER viii Preface This book records an extraordinary case of rapid economic change: of how the Gorokans, a group of New Guinea High- landers, became cash crop producers and small businessmen within a single generation. The Gorokans had been subsistence gardeners, living a Stone Age existence isolated from and un- known to the outside world until gold prospectors, patrol of- ficers, and missionaries first penetrated the Highlands of New Guinea in the early 1930s. Now, less than forty years after their “discovery” and less than twenty years since their intro- duction to money and cash crops, the Gorokans are involved in a wide range of commercial activities they call, in Pidgin English, bisnis—the growing of coffee and other cash crops; the raising of beef cattle; and the operation of trade stores, pas- senger/freight trucks, restaurants, and other enterprises. 1 In particular, this study focuses on the leaders in this economic transition, the men known locally in Pidgin as bikfela man bilong bisnis, a term which literally means “big-men of business,” and how they have pioneered the growing of cash crops and the organization of commercial enterprises among their fellow Gorokans. This analysis of entrepreneurship and economic change among the Gorokans is intended as a contribution to economic anthropology that will relate directly to problems of promoting economic growth in developing countries. Since the publication in 1922 of Malinowski’s Argonauts of the Western Pacific, in which the complex kula exchange system that links the islands off the northeastern coast of New Guinea is described, studies of New Guinean societies have contributed greatly to the de- velopment of economic anthropology. Now studies of economic change in modern New Guinea are beginning to make an im- print on the thinking of anthropologists, economists, and other social scientists concerned with economic development. ix Preface Starting with Belshaw’s In Search of Wealth (1955a), which describes the efforts of the people from small islands off the southeastern tip of New Guinea to become copra producers and to operate their own trading cutters and small enterprises, a number of monographs examining economic change around New Guinea have appeared. These include: Salisbury’s From Stone to Steel (1962), in which the economic and social impact of the introduction of steel tools among the Siane, a small group living on the edge of Goroka, is examined; Crocombe and Hogbin’s The Erap Me chanical Farming Project (1963), which describes how a hill people of the Morobe District moved down onto the plains of the Markham Valley to start a mechanized farming venture; and two recent works, Epstein’s Capitalism, Primitive and Modern (1968) and Salisbury’s Vunamami (1970), both of which analyze how the Tolai of New Britain have become the most prosperous people in New Guinea through growing copra and cocoa and operating their own business concerns. One common theme that emerges is how readily New Guineans accept economic innovations. They exhibit little of what is often termed traditional conservatism. The men por- trayed in these studies appear almost to have been waiting for new economic opportunities, for once these have become available to them they have enthusiastically attempted to adapt to the new demands of cash cropping and commerce. Yet, while these groups have embraced new types of economic activity with alacrity, they have remained thoroughly traditional in many respects. Economic change among them has not involved a com- plete break with the past, with established ideas and patterns of social relationships. Indeed, traditional values and institutions have, so to speak, been one of the major resources tapped by these New Guineans in their efforts to grow cash crops and op- erate commercial enterprises. This theme is explored further here by focusing on the role of entrepreneurship in Gorokan economic growth. The main ar- gument is that Gorokan society was preadapted for economic change, that traditional values and institutions were positive assets rather than liabilities in the adoption of cash cropping and commerce. Although the Gorokans were basically subsis- tence gardeners, they had a flourishing local exchange system involving pigs, seashells, bird of paradise plumes, and other articles considered to be “valuables.” This wealth exchange system was a central focus of Gorokan life; building up stores of valuables and then competitively exchanging them in inter- group ceremonies marking initiations, marriages, military al- x Preface liances, and other vital events was a major concern of Gorokan groups and of ambitious individuals. Gorokan society was marked by a high degree of status mobility based on personal achievement.

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