Mobility and emplacement in north coast Papua New Guinea: Worlding the Pacific Marine Industrial Zone

Abstract

On the north coast of Papua New Guinea, the construction of the Pacific Marine Industrial Zone is catalysing movements of people, capital and things, as well as of the ideas and imaginings which accompany and make them meaningful. Drawn from literary and postcolonial studies, the concept ofworldingoffers a narrative framework through which to think through these movements and the ways in which they complicate prevailing narratives of globalisation. At the Pacific Marine Industrial Zone, the neoliberal worldings that inform the project do not simply catalyse movements, but also act to impose barriers to movement. Local communities assert connection to place, but also generate new circuits of mobility, and rearticulate ideas ofkastom(custom) that have movement at their core. An emphasis onworlding—drawing particularly on Heidegger's distinction between world and earth—allows for a more complex reflection on the relationship between mobility and emplacement, one that more fully illuminates the complexity of the relationship itself, and the way it is experienced at thePMIZsite.