Dobu - Economy

Subsistence and Commercial Activities. Swidden horticulture is "the supreme occupation." The main crop is the yam and its cultivation dominates the Dobu calendar. People without their own yam strains are "beggars" and find it hard to marry. Other indigenous crops are bananas, taro, sago, and sugarcane. Sweet potatoes, manioc, pumpkins, maize, and other crops were introduced more recently. Fishing is an important subsistence activity, and in forested areas men hunt wild pigs, birds, cuscus, and other small game. Pigs, dogs, and chickens are kept for domestic use as well as for exchange. Since the earliest mission days, Dobuans have earned cash by making copra, but migrant labor on plantations and in gold mines was the most important source of money during the colonial era, and it became an essential rite of passage for young men. Today Dobuans abroad are to be found as clerks, public servants, businesspeople, physicians, and lawyers. The rural population continues to engage in subsistence horticulture with some cash cropping (mainly copra and cocoa). The area is served by several wharfs and two small airstrips.

Industrial Arts. Traditional technology was neolithic and typical of Melanesia. Obsidian and stone ax blades were imported, but most other tools and weapons (bamboo knives, black-palm spears, wooden fishhooks, digging sticks, etc.) were made locally, as were the seagoing canoes used on trading and raiding expeditions. Clay pots were imported from the Amphletts (more recently from Tubetube in the southern Massim), but coconut-leaf baskets, pandanus-leaf mats, and skirts were made by each householder. Craft specialization was rare, unless in canoe carving, net making, and the manufacture of arm shells. The most crucial specializations were magical.

Trade. The traditional ceremonial kula exchange ( kune in Dobu), for which the Massim is ethnographically famous, continues today with many modifications. Dobu remains an important node in this vast interisland network of exchange partners through whose hands arm shells ( mwali ) circulate to the south and shell necklaces ( bagi ) to the north. Today, most kune voyaging is done by chartered motor launch instead of by canoe. This streamlines activities and obviates much of the traditional ritual; it also enables women to participate. Subsidiary, "utilitarian" trade is now negligible, though traditionally kune involved (in addition to shell ornaments) stone blades, obsidian, pottery, wooden bowls, pigs, sago, yams, betel nuts, face paint, lime gourds and spatulas, canoe hulls, and even human beings. Live captives could be redeemed by the payment of shell valuables, or they could be adopted by their captors to replace dead kin. Kune was thus intimately connected to warfare, marriage exchanges, and mortuary observances.

Division of Labor. The most crucial specializations were magical, and these had significant economic implications as, for instance, in the control of rain and the growth of crops and pigs, in maintaining the abundance of fish, and in curing diseases. A husband and wife cooperate in gardening but their separate inheritances of seed yams require separate plots. Gardens are cleared and planted communally, but after the village magicians have performed their rituals, the gardens are the private domains of men and their wives. Bush clearing is done by men and women together, the men cutting the heavier timber. Men fire the debris and later wield the digging stick; women insert and cover the yam seeds. Women weed and mound the plants as they grow; men cut stakes and train the yam vines to climb them. Women dig the harvest; men plant and tend banana patches. Both sexes fish and make sago; men cook on ceremonial occasions. Traditionally, only men traveled on kune expeditions, yet only old women were thought to possess the magic to control the winds.

Land Tenure. The use of gardens and village lands is governed by matrilineage membership. A man inherits land from his mother or mother's brother. A father may give some garden land (never village land) to his son, though after his father's death the son is prohibited from eating the produce of this land. Nowadays there is a tendency for fathers to transmit land bearing cash crops (especially coconuts) to their sons.