Raitman Olgeta: Negotiating What it Means to be a ‘Good’ Man in Contemporary Papua New Guinea

This thesis investigates ambivalences and tensions in the ways that men and their communities frame what it means to be a raitman, a ‘real’ man or ‘good’ man, in contemporary East New Britain, Papua New Guinea. In looking at the refraction of aspirational masculinity through lived experiences of men and their communities, I argue that to affect change, there is a need for more nuanced and politicised conceptualisations of masculinities in the context of campaigns for equal gender rights. The figure of the raitman is a common trope in Papua New Guinean and international campaigns to address HIV and AIDS, sikAIDS in Tok Pisin, and violence against women. This figure is imagined as a perfect role model who is compliant with the directives of prevention slogans: a wearer of condoms, a faithful partner, non-violent and in control of everything from anger to sexual appetite, to alcohol consumption. In reality, these tropes manifest unevenly and ambivalently in the lives of men, their partners and their broader communities as they are refracted through personal and collective aspirations; loving and complex relationships with peers, families and intimate partners; existing normative ideas of the most esteemed way of being a man; and collective efforts to navigate structural violence and uncertainty. Within this milieu, I consider how men’s efforts to navigate ideas of aspirational masculinity, and their desire to position themselves as raitman, impact upon how they relate to and position women, and what this can tell us about efforts to address issues of gender violence and inequality in Papua New Guinea. The thesis takes the transnational campaign framing of good masculinity as a starting point and asks how these attempts to influence gender norms and practices are heard and adopted, or subverted, in everyday encounters. The research draws upon ethnographic fieldwork conducted in urban, semi-rural and rural-remote field sites in 2012-13. The thesis is anchored in feminist scholarship and engages with literature from anthropology, geography and development studies to complement the narratives of women, men and communities heard through the fieldwork. In doing so, the thesis provides an account of how gendered norms intersect with, and are made malleable by, individual and collective development aspirations, and experiences of structural violence and precarity

Preventing Violence at Home, Allowing Violence in the Workplace: A Case Study of Security Guards in Papua New Guinea

In this In Brief I ask: How do Papua New Guinean men living in violent contexts make sense of messages aimed at preventing violence against women? I explore this question through the views shared by security guards who participated in discussion groups as part of a larger research project that explores how men interpret and respond to primary prevention messaging addressing HIV and violence against women. Drawing on this research, I suggest that the efficacy of behaviour-change messaging aimed at primary prevention of violence against women in Papua New Guinea is challenged by the normalisation of men's experiences of violence, both as perpetrators and as targets of violent 'discipline' outside the home.AusAI

The Formal, the Informal, and the Precarious: Making a Living in Urban Papua New Guinea

For many Papua New Guineans, the dominant accounts of 'the economy' � contained within development reports, government documents and the media � do not adequately reflect their experiences of making a living. Large-scale resource extraction, the private sector, export cash cropping and wage employment have dominated these accounts. Meanwhile, the broader economic picture has remained obscured, and the diversity of economic practices, including a flourishing 'informal' economy, has routinely been overlooked and undervalued. Addressing this gap, this paper provides some grounded examples of the diverse livelihood strategies people employ in Papua New Guinea's growing urban centres. We examine the strategies people employ to sustain themselves materially, and focus on how people acquire and recirculate money. We reveal the interconnections between a diverse range of economic activities, both formal and informal. In doing so, we complicate any clear narrative that might, for example, associate waged employment with economic security, or street selling with precarity and urban poverty. Our work is informed by observations of people's daily lives, and conversations with security guards (Stephanie Lusby), the salaried middle class (John Cox), women entrepreneurs (Ceridwen Spark), residents from the urban settlements (Michelle Rooney) and betel nut traders and vendors (Timothy Sharp). Collectively, our work takes an urban focus, yet the flows and connectivity between urban and rural, and our focus on livelihood strategies, means much of our discussion is also relevant to rural people and places. Our examples, drawn from urban centres throughout the country, each in their own way illustrate something of the diversity of economic activity in urban PNG. Our material captures the innovation and experimentation of people's responses to precarity in contemporary PNG.AusAI

Do No Harm Research: Solomon Islands

This report covers the research undertaken in Solomon Islands as part of the much larger project, Do No Harm: Understanding the Relationship between Women’s Economic Empowerment and Violence against Women in Melanesia. The Do No Harm research addresses the question of how to improve women’s economic agency and the security of their livelihoods without compromising their safety. It sought to capture the diversity of ways that women endeavour to overcome economic disadvantage in contemporary Melanesia. Fieldwork for the Do No Harm research was undertaken in Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea, where a total of 485 interviews were conducted, including 238 with women.1 The interviews generated a large body of rich qualitative data on women lives and the difficulties and challenges they confront as they seek to earn income in order to improve their lives and those of their children.AusAI

Negotiating What It Means to be a "Good" Man in Contemporary Papua New Guinea

In this seminar, PhD Candidate Stephanie Lusby provides an overview of her thesis research, undertaken in urban, semi-rural and rural-remote field sites in 2012-13, and presents key findings from it. Her thesis research takes the transnational campaign framing of good masculinity as a starting point and investigates the ambivalences and tensions in the ways that men and their communities frame what it means to be a raitman, a real man or good man, in contemporary East New Britain, Papua New Guinea (PNG). The research also examines how collective and individual aspirations and experiences of navigating social, political and economic precarity, shape interpretations of good masculinity, and how men position themselves against those aspirations.AusAI

The formal, the informal, and the precarious: making a living in urban Papua New Guinea

Overview: For many Papua New Guineans, the dominant accounts of ‘the economy’ – contained within development reports, government documents and the media – do not adequately reflect their experiences of making a living. Large-scale resource extraction, the private sector, export cash cropping and wage employment have dominated these accounts. Meanwhile, the broader economic picture has remained obscured, and the diversity of economic practices, including a flourishing ‘informal’ economy, has routinely been overlooked and undervalued. Addressing this gap, this paper provides some grounded examples of the diverse livelihood strategies people employ in Papua New Guinea’s growing urban centres. This discussion paper examines the strategies people employ to sustain themselves materially, and focuses on how people acquire and recirculate money. In doing so it reveals the interconnections between a diverse range of economic activities, both formal and informal. &nbsp

Naming and recognition of intimate partner violence and family of origin violence among LGBTQ communities in Australia

Dominant framings of intimate partner violence (IPV) construct the experience as one where a cisgender man enacts violence against a cisgender woman. While often the case, this framing obfuscates the experiences of people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, gender diverse or queer (LGBTQ) and may challenge their ability to conceive of their relationship-based experiences as abusive or violent. The extent to which hostile experiences from family of origin (FOV) members are conceived or named as violence is also unclear. A large, online, national survey of LGBTQ adults separately assessed experiences of IPV and FOV in two ways: a direct question relating to abuse from a partner/s or family member/s, and a second question (asked irrespective of the previous answer) which sought to establish experience of a nuanced list of abusive acts that can constitute violence (including emotional abuse, LGBTQ-specific forms of violence and enforced social isolation). Following comparison of responses, multiple regression analyses were performed to assess variation by demographic characteristics. Among the full sample of 6,835 individuals, when asked directly, 30.93% (n = 2,108) of participants indicated that they had ever experienced FOV and 41.73% (n = 2,846) indicated that they had ever experienced IPV. However, when asked about experiences of FOV using the second nuanced question, 43.18% (n = 2,675) responded in ways that indicated that they had ever experienced FOV and 60.71% (n = 3,716) with respect to IPV. The recognition of violence, as indicated by responses to the direct question varied by numerous characteristics, including age, gender and educational attainment. These findings indicate some LGBTQ people may struggle to recognise or name their family or relationship experiences as abusive or violent, which may complicate their ability or willingness to access professional support. More expansive framings, policies and responses to IPV and FOV are required