Acculturation and Health in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea: Dissent on Diversity, Diets, and Development [and Comments and Reply]

Abstract

A widespread tradition in human ecology claims that unacculturated peoples were healthy and usually adequately nourished and lived in harmony with their environments and that acculturation reduced their health and nutritional status by disrupting the ecological principles through which homeostasis was achieved. Selective use of global examples provides some support for these assertions, but more detailed examination of data from the Central Highlands of New Guinea, an area apparently also offering support, demonstrates that both must be critically questioned. In the Central Highlands at the time of first contact, mortality rates were high and life expectancies short despite a range of direct population control practices. Unavailability of adequate weaning foods, cultural restrictions on diets, and social and ecological constraints contributed to significant levels of early childhood malnutrition. Acculturation contributed to improved healthy and nutrition as a result of greater dietary diversity, though variation in the extent of the transfer of labor and land away from food crops ensures that there are exceptions. The duration and content of acculturation and crucial to changes in health and nutrition, and the Central Highlands situation is not likely to be an anomaly. Lack of a model synchronically distinguishing such variables as income availability, food prices, and food area per capita has obscured the complexity of changes in the health and nutritional status of acculturating societies and led to erroneous conclusions.