Nahau, Pihi Manus, Pilapan: Hegemony's gender as artefacts of history

It is a pleasure to contribute to the book forum on the republication of the book Culture and History in the Pacific. My contribution comprises two parts. In the first part, I briefly reflect on the book and its current relevance and highlight some issues that resonate with me. In the second part, I provide a more personal response to the book. Together, I hope that this two-part reflection shows the important place this book has in mediating past and present contributions and challenges in anthropological practice

Money and Value in Urban Settlement Households in Port Moresby Part 2: Understanding Spatial and Income Inequality Through Housing Choices

This In Brief highlights how different land and housing regimes in Port Moresby, the national capital of Papua New Guinea (PNG), drive spatial and income inequality in the city. Among the issues I explore in my PhD research are the housing challenges that people face in Moresby and the strategies they pursue to access land and housing in settlements. I draw on two sets of preliminary data collected as part of my research. The first is ethnographic and income data based on a survey of 32 households in the ATS settlement1 in Moresby where I conducted fieldwork over a six-month period in 2013. The second dataset, comprising advertised rental and sale prices of properties in Moresby, is compiled from newspaper advertisementsAusAI

Big Men Drink Beer; Drunk Big Men Do Not Hit Women

Alcohol-related violence among security-sector forces in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea (PNG), highlights ongoing concerns regarding security and violence. This In Brief explores the question: what can studies of material culture, commodities or substances offer to policymakers addressing the social, political and economic implications of alcohol?AusAI

Money and Values in Urban Settlement Households in Port Moresby Part 1: Money is Important, So Are Children, Water and Firewood

This In Brief presents some preliminary findings of my doctoral research examining the politicaleconomy context of livelihoods in urban informal settlements in Papua New Guinea (PNG). It highlights the gendered dimensions of economic engagement, household livelihood choices, and the importance of situating these issues within economic processes occurring in the urban context.AusAI

"We Want Development": Land and Water (Dis)connections in Port Moresby, Urban Papua New Guinea

This article examines development practices of residents, who are also migrants and citizens, living in informal settlements in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea (PNG). Using the analytical frame of the nexus between development and land, I problematize PNG’s national development discourse in the urban context. By examining the connections and disconnections between local practice and national and international development discourse, I highlight how informal processes, development discourse, and land discourse in PNG intersect to spatialize development practices and outcomes in urban spaces. Citizens who informally occupy state land are trapped by the legal fault lines of state land tenure, and, consequently, their efforts to obtain services are rendered informal or illegal in development policies. The outcomes of their efforts to secure services and their relationships with state actors are in turn characterized by disconnections and connections according to their ability to meet policy conditions and engage with the state actors. Urban space in PNG is a construct of a colonial legacy of property. It is also coconstructed by contemporary policies that spatialize development services in the urban context and by Indigenous social values and collective responses to overcome systemic and structural impediments to achieving development goals

Nogat Mani: Social Safety Nets for Tufi Migrants of ATS Settlement, Moresby, Papua New Guinea

Nogat mani, the Tok Pisin term expressing ‘we have no money’, is a familiar refrain of migrants in Port Moresby, the capital city of Papua New Guinea (PNG). In the absence of formal income opportunities and affordable housing, many are forced to resort to informal forms of shelter and income generation. Food and shelter are particularly difficult to secure which is why many rely on support from people of their own ethnic group. One such group is the Tufi people of Oro Province who live in the ATS squatter settlement located near the city’s airport. There, kin and neighbors are important sources of support but, paradoxically, also place severe demands on those who have food, housing and money. Moreover, people must contribute to collective undertakings or risk becoming alienated from this urban safety net. This collective identity has to be balanced with the reality of being marginal citizens in the increasingly cosmopolitan city. This thesis examines the livelihood and social safety strategies of this group of Tufi migrants over the period from the mid-1990s to 2013. It draws on a combination of ethnographic and quantitative data based on fieldwork conducted in 2013, reflective autoethnographic data and secondary sources. It examines the changing forms of indigenous Melanesian value systems in urban settings as they come into contestation with neo-liberal systems of value which dominate access to basic needs in the city. Drawing on theoretical concepts of value, exchange, kinship and urban space, this thesis provides a grounded account of settlement life in PNG. It examines the challenges and responses of the Tufi as marginal citizens in one PNG informal settlement and demonstrates how collective identity is deployed to address the many challenges encountered in urban life. The thesis makes visible emerging forms of citizenship in urban PNG and the paradoxes of collective action and identity.

Sharing What Can Be Sold: Women Haus Maket Vendors in Port Moresby's Settlements

Dominant narratives of the economy, as well as policy discourses in Papua New Guinea (PNG), tend to separate the ‘formal’ from the ‘informal’ economy. Concurrently, there is a development policy emphasis on women's economic empowerment. In urban areas this has meant a policy focus on larger market places as sites where women need support for economic engagement. Within these policy discourses, one activity in urban areas usually relegated to the ‘informal’ economy is small home‐based market stalls, referred to in this paper as haus maket. Located at homes or on nearby roads, haus maket are prolific and available to the public, and as such provide a similar function to public market places as spaces to make money. This paper considers these public yet intimate spaces as sites where vendors, usually women, embody and lead contestations between money and moral value spheres. At a time when the policy emphasis is on the formal economy and larger market places in PNG, why do such small market places persist? The first aim of this paper is to establish the role of haus maket as a site where spheres of value intersect. Rather than being ‘informal’ and peripheral, I seek to foreground its centrality to the economy but also as a site where economic and social moral values conflate. The second aim of the paper is to examine the role of sharing as a form of transaction in its own right distinct from exchange as a transaction between two actors. Haus maket stalls are sites of sharing and of moral action and value where forms of value in the settlement are shaped and negotiated.Funding to support the preparation of this paper and 2016 fieldwork was provided through the ANU and University of Papua New Guinea partnership project, funded by the Australian Aid Program