Paper short abstract:

Marketplaces both create, and are created by, particular ideas about personhood and social relationships. This paper examines contemporary moral evaluations of production and work, gift and commodity exchange, and social obligations to kin and non-kin in the context of the Goroka fresh food market.

Paper long abstract:

In his 1955 article "Morality and the Concept of the Person among Gahuku-Gama", Kenneth Read argued that moral evaluation among Gahuku-Gama of the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea in the early 1950s did not operate from a fixed perspective of universal obligation but instead depended on social context and the particular social, and especially kinship, relations involved. On the basis of this, he argued that Gahuku-Gama conceptualize persons as "social individuals" rather than as persons distinct from their social statuses and social relationships. Discussions of Melanesian personhood have, of course, been prominent in the anthropology of the region in the 60 years since Read's article, a period which has seen enormous social and economic change in Melanesia, the Papua New Guinea Highlands, and indeed among people who Read called Gahuku-Gama. In this paper, I take up themes of morality and personhood in the contemporary context of the Goroka fresh food market where Gahuka-Gama, and their culturally-similar neighbours, transact food both with people with whom they have, and do not have, previous social relations. In particular, I examine contemporary moral evaluations of production and work, gift and commodity exchange, and social obligations to kin and non-kin, and the implications of those evaluations for contemporary concepts of personhood.