Paper short abstract:

Exteriority is a decisive component for the survival of social groups in the Highlands of New Guinea, by giving an impetus for defining their boundaries. Be it foreign ritual knowledge, foreign planting material or strangers, all contribute to maintaining a social network in a highly diverse region.

Paper long abstract:

For the Gawigl-speakers of the Western Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea, exteriority is a creative focus in several different contexts, namely in relation to the regeneration and reproduction of human beings, pigs and food-plants in itinerant gardens and social groups. Exteriority refers here not to national or 'ethnic' borders but to a regular transcending of cultural and linguistic boundaries between neighbouring groups. A striking example for the social necessity of boundary crossing is 'foreign' ritual knowledge that travelled in the region till some forty years ago. This movement of ritual knowledge, which was time and again considered to be new as well as unknown, resulted in maintaining a certain degree of difference between neighbouring groups through reference to a foreign 'outside'. It was this mechanism of an innovational exteriority that guaranteed a solid regional network interlinking the different social groups of this area. Nowadays, we can perceive a variation of it in various other forms of boundary-crossing social relationships.