Article Notes: Filer, Colin

Custome, Law and Ideology in Papua New Guinea
Colin Filer

Comparing Custom (Kastam or Kastom) and Law (Lo)

Law and Custome seemed to have been blurred, especially between the multiple colonial powers/periods and then into independence. This is especially true for land ownership rights, which became a sticking point with petroleum and mineral mining operations tried to lease lands. Anthropologists were rarely asked to be legal experts on traditional customs with regards to land. Originally, "custom" was used to throw out practices that colonial powers and missionaries disliked. Other problems include Tok Pisin words that occupy a larger semantic range than their English roots.

The concept of  Law also ran into problems when it was fragmented into several "rules". Local "Law Men" hashed out the "law", which was mostly whatever they could agree on, usually with respect to amounts due for certain offenses. They would refer to lo bilong tumbuna, that is "Law of the Ancesters" but this was usually as a last ditch effort when losing an argument.

The "Law Men" councils were replaced at independence with a court system. This court system was not always very thorough and these "Law Men" bemoaned their loss of influence. Custom started to gain in strength, though whether these "customs" were actually traditional is up for debate.

Usually, if a company wanted to know about "customs" it was mostly due to land ownership rules and rituals with regards how much they should pay for a lease when starting a mining operation. (See notes on the Society Reform Program). "Customs" however would often change from situtation to situtaion. However, land ownership rights became very important when gold mining started to become more prevelent and the amounts of money being discussed grew. (For a view on this and gender, look at page 12-13 of the document about widow excluded from land rights discussion.)

While some might argue that Custom or customs aren't in practice anymore, they do seem to still be practiced. Customs are practiced, though they may be overly legalized in practice. An example is the mortuary ceremonies.