The moral grounds of critique: Between possessive individuals entrepreneurs and big men in new Ireland

This paper outlines the moral bases of critique of the possessive individual by examining small kin-based business enterprises in central New Ireland. I begin with an ethnographic example, comparing an elite entrepreneur with the head of a small kin-based rural business. Early economic development plans for Papua New Guinea enabled entrepreneurs to become distinctly different figures from Big Men (traditional leaders), but the head of the small business is neither of these. In comparing the grassroots business with the entrepreneur and Big Man, I show there is some degree of instability in the concept of possession. Big Men become prestigious by meeting the claims upon them by their kin, whereas grassroots businessmen become prestigious by managing networks of kin. I argue that the grassroots business is better described as a corporate individual, a contemporary form of the possessive individual that is best known with the rise of its critique. The theory of possessive individualism finds both its fullest expression and severest limit in the unstable definition of possession.