Tubuan : history, tradition, and identity among the Tolai of Papua New Guinea
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This dissertation examines identity formation and transformation among the Tolai of Papua New Guinea through a historically grounded ethnographic analysis of the tubuan, a masked ritual figure which they generally regard as a prime symbol of their "traditional" culture. Much has been written about contemporary constructions of tradition in the Pacific. It has been suggested that people constitute identities by articulating notions of tradition in opposition to what is considered "Western" or "modern"---particularly church, state, and business. Tolai do distinguish their "traditional" culture from what they refer to as lotu (church), matanitu (government), and bisnis (business), but their constructions of tradition are often situated within these three separate yet closely intertwined institutions, which were originally introduced from outside but which they have made their own. This is most clearly evidenced by the deployment of the tubuan in "modern" settings, such as church celebrations, state functions, and tourism events. In the dissertation, I explore historical dimensions of the contemporary use of the tubuan in the institutional contexts of lotu, matanitu, and bisnis by paying particular attention to specific political circumstances in which Tolai negotiated problematic relations between these indigenous and exogenous forms. I show how Tolai maintained the institution of the tubuan, which was a vehicle for social reproduction, while eagerly appropriating new institutions; how Tolai came to see the tubuan as a prime symbol of their "traditional" culture through their power struggles with European colonizers; and how Tolai have used the tubuan to reproduce or reshape power relations within their society or country that have been manifested since national independence in 1975. The appearance of the tubuan in "modern" settings, which emphasizes the continued relevance of the "traditional" values it embodies to contemporary Tolai life, helps Tolai visualize a distinct Tolai identity that combines and synthesizes seemingly antithetical themes---an identity that challenges a simplistic dichotomy between tradition and modernity that is still perpetuated in ethnographic writing.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".