Kastom and Skul : Micro-sociological examination and theoretical consideration of social changes in a Melanesian society

Recent studies on social changes in Melanesia initiated by contact with the West could be divided into two: 1) those on the consequential changes among inhabitants after their closed society was opened up by westerners\u27visits ; 2) those on socio-political changes at a stage when a small community as a whole after its initial changes is going through social and institutional re-formation. The former are mostly concerned with the process of traditional culture being influenced by Western civilization and the latter with that of traditional society being re-structuralized into a much wider framework, for example, a nation. In the south-western part of Malekula Island, the New Hebrides, however, we can find the two kinds or stages of change referred to occurring in two adjacent areas. In the interior region, the inhabitants called Mbotgote are undergoing initial influence from the West on their culture, though they still keep their own way of life. On the coast, more west-ernized villagers who were converted to Christianity in their own or preceding generations now see a new situation arising from the imminent political schedule of the nation\u27s independence.The author first describes the historical and cultural background of the New Hebrides archipelago and also that of the South-West of Malekula Island.In the description of the setting and the later discussion, a pair of notions, kastom and skul, is used as the analytical framework. Kastom in a narrow sense means ritual objects and, more broadly, anything proper to traditional life.Skul means a church as well as a school, but it has also a broader meaning: anything introduced from the Western world. The history of the archipelago has so far been the one-directional process of the skul side encroaching on the kastom side. But the following microso-ciological examination of the materials from Malekula reveals much oscillating movement of the people in the two areas concerned, which are presented in three aspects : 1) ritual and cosmology, 2) politics and administration, and 3) material life and economy. The interpretation of the data demonstrates that social change at a given time could differ in these three aspects in its extent and direction, and that, however limited their conditions are, these people positively manipulate the new elements of skul as a means to achieve their political and economic ends and even to defend their ritual (kastom) activities. In the last section the author suggests a working hypothesis that the most crucial point in a society\u27s changing phenomena is whether the people\u27s notion of ‘change’ itself is changing or not. The Mbotgote still basically conceive ‘change’ as var-iation within a fixed structure, while the coastal Christian people are realizing that ‘change’ is always there to push them to re-form their life and society under the name of progress or development