Masculinity and the culture of rising sea-levels in a mangrove lagoon in Papua New Guinea

David Lipset

doi:10.1186/s40152-017-0057-5

Abstract

In the wake of rising sea-levels, dialogue about climate change and resettlement took on new urgency among the Murik, a lagoon-dwelling, coastal people in Papua New Guinea. A theoretical question is raised by their discourse: how to conceptualize the relationship among multiple perspectives of climate change that does not pre-empt local voices? Bakhtin’s concept of the chronotope and Lacan’s notion of the symbolic phallus in the time and space of the other are utilized in this analysis. In particular, chronotopes of modernity and global risk contest a chronotope of local masculinity. These concepts, in turn, are challenged by a chronotope of doubt, and the latter seems to be winning the argument, as it were. The four chronotopes, I argue, combine in dialogue to constitute an otherwise ignored view of rising sea-levels, not only in Papua New Guinea but in climate-change discourse, more broadly. Multi-sited ethnography is analyzed in support of this argument.

Highlights

In the Pacific Islands, the total area of mangrove lagoons consists of about 343,735 ha, the largest areas occurring in Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Fiji and New Caledonia
There are two main environmental settings for mangrove lagoons in the Pacific, deltaic and estuarine mangroves on high islands and embayment and reef flat mangroves on low islands. The former develop on islands with river systems that deliver significant quantities of fluvial sediment from catchments to coastal zones
Large mangrove ecosystems may develop on sedimentary shorelines with gentle gradients between mean sea level and the level of high water spring tides

Summary

Introduction

In the Pacific Islands, the total area of mangrove lagoons consists of about 343,735 ha, the largest areas occurring in Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Fiji and New Caledonia. On the Murik coast, in debate about the meanings of rising sea-levels, I found voices taking four differing chronotopes for granted—four differing concepts of human agency in space and time.

Results

Conclusion