At Hagen the fieldworker rapidly becomes aware of the high-level, named groups in his area, for a person's group-membership is regularly indicated in conversation by prefixing it to his (or her) personal name.

The most regularly mentioned high-level groups are those which I call tribes. These are the groups one is likely to hear mentioned most often: the Ndika, Mokei, Kumndi, Nengka, and so on near to Mount Hagen township, the Tipuka, Kombukla, Minembi, Kawelka and others in the area north of the township where most of my work was done.

Despite the frequency with which one meets such tribal names, defining a tribe in general terms is no simple matter. One reason for this is that these major groups vary greatly in size and segmentation pattern, and correspondingly in the functions carried out by segments at various levels. In this chapter I shall discuss this problem of variation in the size of tribes first; second I shall attempt to establish a set of working definitions for different group-levels; and finally I shall describe the idioms in terms of which Hageners themselves refer to their groups and how these relate to actual processes of individual affiliation to groups.

VARIATION IN GROUP SIZE

The largest tribes are those living on the Ogelbeng Plain, or just south of it, and on the slopes of Mount Hagen.