From men's houses to leader courts

Land use systems in the central highlands of Papua New Guinea have been subject to accelerated change since their initial interrelation with state systems, missionaries and the monetary economy less than a century ago. This thesis explores the governance of land use in the area of Dirima in Simbu Province and discusses processes of transformation that the governance of land use is subject to between 1945 and present times. Emphasis is given to questions of how the governance of land use is socially organized, how land is accessed and managed for agricultural production, and how the governance of land use interrelates with, and draws on, institutions of government. Results of this study are based on three months of ethnographic field work, with participant observation as sole method in the field, and complemented by the review of secondary sources. The governance of land use in the area of Dirima is embedded in a social structure of hierarchically segmented groups, while the functions and significance of different group segments for the governance of land use have changed over the last decades. Strategies of land use are increasingly based on decisions taken within nuclear families, rather than coordinated within larger groups. In the past, men's houses have constituted a significant institution for the governance of land use, while nowadays adopted court systems play a greater role. While this thesis explores change specifically in relation to the governance and social organization of land use, it suggests that a more comprehensive understanding of changes in land use systems may be gained by analyzing social change in more inclusive terms