Urban Papua New Research Articles

The New Port Moresby: Gender Space and Belonging in Urban Papua New Guinea, Ceridwen Spark (2020)

Review of: The New Port Moresby: Gender, Space, and Belonging in Urban Papua New Guinea, Ceridwen Spark (2020) Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai‘i Press, 174 pp., ISBN 978 0 82488 180 1 (hbk), US$80 ISBN 978 0 82488 980 7 (pbk), US$30

We just ‘SHAREit’: Smartphones, data and music sharing in urban Papua New Guinea

AbstractThis article examines how the use of mobile phones and associated software creates and sustains regionally diverse urban communities. There is an interdependent connection between music that is highly participatory and locally relevant, and processes involved in sustaining key social relationships across a variety of groupings. Increasingly ubiquitous technologies such as mobile phones are used for musical purposes in ways that specifically put certain processes to work to sustain these social phenomena. This connects people with transnational software‐based commerce through social media, local telecommunications companies and phone manufacturers. That results in the navigation of ecologies and economies of data, hardware and software that work in local urban circumstances. In the case of data, we demonstrate how modes of exchange and reciprocity tied to social relationships exhibit similarities with informal economies of tobacco and betelnut. With social groups, the church‐based community perspective provides urban examples of communities that cross regions, and extended family networks. This ethnographic perspective shows how increasingly global technologies are used in urbanite Melanesia in ways that sustain longstanding values and practices, while also incorporating identities and associations around changing urban, national and international circumstances.

Kinship and relatedness in urban Papua New Guinea

Early anthropological literature on urban Port Moresby (Papua New Guinea) highlights the importance of urban-rural kin connections and the village flows into town and vice versa. While this is still important, this article focuses on contemporary kinship and relatedness in an urban settlement in Port Moresby and how relations there are made evident through everyday actions of exchange and sharing of food, time, and consideration. People in town build kin-like relations using the concept of wan, particularly wantok (same language), wanstrit (same street), and wanlotu (same religion), as they share resources, support neighbourhood marriage and funerary rituals, and as employers and employees become kin. Kinship in Port Moresby, though constrained in many ways, is acted out in forms that are rooted in urban place, space, and home.

Téléphones mobiles, un domaine public dans la Papouasie Nouvelle-Guinée péri-urbaine

In urban Papua New Guinea (png), attitudes about and uses of mobile phones may be construed as a kind of a Habermasian public sphere, albeit one whose moral space and discourse is characteristically Melanesian. That is to say, the notion of “public” is not sharply differentiated either from the state or the private domain. In png, the citizenry assess mobile phone use not to only criticize the legitimacy of the postcolonial state, but also complain about the moral failings of the nation. Meanwhile, as they do so, they make calls for legitimate purposes, purposes that help them attain particularistic goals and assert particularistic values, both old and new.

Economies of scale, bulk discounts, and liquidity constraints: comparing unit value and transaction level evidence in a poor country

We examine bulk discounts, which are claimed to explain the Deaton and Paxson puzzle about household size and food demand, and which may matter to household behavior studied in other literatures. Most previous studies use unit values, which are subject to several biases and reflect economizing choices made by households, so may not reliably estimate the bulk discount schedule. Instead, individual transaction records in household expenditure diaries are used, which report expenditure, quantity, brand, unit size and number purchased per transaction. The bulk discount schedule is estimated for four foods (rice, canned meat, canned fish and chicken) that make up one-third of the total food budget in a survey in urban Papua New Guinea. For each food we use the dominant brand(s) so there is no quality variation and the estimated price schedule only reflects discounts due to variations in purchase quantity. All foods have precisely measured but small elasticities of unit price with respect to quantity purchased.

Making Women in the City: Notes from a Port Moresby Boarding House

This article takes up the postcolonial feminization of Papua New Guinea’s capital city, Port Moresby, through an analysis of a City Mission boarding house. Haus Ruth is a place designed to resolve the “problem” of two types of women living in Port Moresby: unmarried professional women and married women fleeing domestic violence. The “problem” of Port Moresby’s female population stems from the colonial history of the city, a city that was not originally meant to have either Papua New Guineans or women living in it. Following decolonization, the city’s burgeoning female population created pressure on existing housing arrangements and also gave rise to rapidly changing and contested notions of what it means to be an urban Papua New Guinean woman. As such, Haus Ruth offers a complicating case study to theories of urban space and of the “right to the city.” While the future that Haus Ruth offers to its residents is a hopeful one, it is also one constrained by the enclaved and fragmentary nature of the city around them and by the aspirational discourses of class mobility and Christian companionate marriage espoused by Haus Ruth as an evangelical institution. The colonial and mission histories of Port Moresby serve to elucidate how the unusual arrangement of Haus Ruth emerged and how it has accidentally become the site of an almost unprecedented social form for Papua New Guinea: single-sex female consociation. Although this consociation is mediated by the institutional space of the house, it also opens up the possibility of future spaces in which this city of the postcolony not only contains but is shaped by the women who inhabit it.

Health Services for Gender-Based Violence: Médecins Sans Frontières Experience Caring for Survivors in Urban Papua New Guinea.

BackgroundLevels of gender-based violence in Papua New Guinea (PNG) are high; health services for survivors are limited. Evidence from the few existing health services for survivors can inform improvements in care in this and similar settings.MethodsMédecins Sans Frontières supported health services for survivors in Lae, PNG from 2008–2013. Routine monitoring data from August 2010-April 2013 were used to describe patient and service characteristics.Results5,892 individuals received care over 6,860 presentations, the majority self-referred or referred by friends and family. Presentations were attributed to intimate partner violence(62%), non-partner sexual violence(15%), other forms of violence(3%), and past (but not current) violence(21%). 97% were female; an estimated 4.9% (95%CI:4.8–5.0%) of females resident in the catchment area presented to the programme during the 2.8years analysed. Of presentations for non-partner sexual violence, 79% knew their abuser and 50% were children <16 years. 92% of presentations reporting current violence received medical treatment for injuries. The majority of patients who received multiple counselling sessions reported improved functioning and decreased severity of psycho-social complaints.ConclusionsCommunity awareness of the availability of free, best-practice, accessible, confidential medical and counselling services for sexual and gender-based violence in Lae, PNG resulted in many survivors presenting for care. High levels of ongoing intimate partner violence and child sexual abuse by known abusers indicates that alongside comprehensive medical care, access to effective services in non-health sectors such as policing, protection and legal services are needed if survivors are to escape the cycle of violence.

Associations of Socioeconomic Status with Diet and Physical Activity in Migrant Bougainvilleans in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea

Urban migrants in Papua New Guinea have undergone a nutritional transition. The present study investigated associations of socioeconomic status with dietary and physical activity patterns among migrant Bougainvilleans from Nassioi territory in the capital city of Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. All adults Naasioi migrants residing in Port Moresby were identified (N = 185) and 70 were included. The International Physical Activity Questionnaire was used to evaluate physical activity, and dietary patterns were assessed by per-week consumption frequency of food items. Principal component analysis was applied to produce a composite score for socioeconomic status. Least square regression analysis indicated that socioeconomic status was positively correlated with consumption of a traditional diet (p = .03) and negatively with walking-related physical activity (p = .02), but it was not correlated with MET-minutes of moderate/vigorous activity. Different patterns of nutritional transition occur among migrants in urban Papua New Guinea, depending on socioeconomic status.

Diet and physical activity among migrant Bougainvilleans in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea: Association with anthropometric measures and blood pressure

Obesity and hypertension are increasing in Papua New Guinea. This study investigated the association of dietary pattern and physical activity level with anthropometric measurements and blood pressure in migrant Bougainvilleans in the capital city of Port Moresby. Adults who had moved from Naasioi territory on Bougainville Island and resided in Port Moresby during the study period were studied (n = 70). The International Physical Activity Questionnaire was used to evaluate physical activity, and dietary pattern was assessed by per week consumption frequency of food items. The least square regression analysis revealed that interindividual variation in body mass index and waist circumference was explained by variations in physical activity but not by dietary pattern. Blood pressure was not associated with physical activity level or dietary pattern. The individual variation in anthropometric measurements in urban Papua New Guinea is mainly influenced by physical activity level.

AIDS and ‘building a wall’ around Christian country in rural Papua New Guinea

This paper explores an ongoing dialogue about Christianity in light of the recent influx of HIV and AIDS into the villages of the Gogodala of Western Province, Papua New Guinea. I argue that a suggestion by a woman in late 2004 to ‘build a wall’ around the Gogodala region in Western Province in order to stop or slow the spread of HIV/AIDS reflects a recent concern with the sustainability of this rural Christian community, referred to in English as ‘Christian country’. Understanding AIDS to be a threat posed largely from outsiders, whether Papua New Guinean or European, sections of these primarily village‐based communities aim to create both a physical and metaphorical boundary between themselves and outsiders. At present, local prevention and intervention strategies concerning HIV and AIDS focus on conservative, evangelical narratives about the preservation of the principles and practices of Christian country, through the repudiation of unrestrained sexuality, for example, which is believed to be increasingly prevalent not only in their own area but throughout urban Papua New Guinea. A growing divide between rural and urban Gogodala, then, has become a major part of the local dialogue about AIDS and represents significant contestation over the practices and ideational basis of Christian country.

Josephine's Journey: Gender‐based Violence and Marian Devotion in Urban Papua New Guinea

ABSTRACT This article deals with how, in the urban setting of Madang, Papua New Guinea, Marian devotion is deployed in response to domestic and gender‐based violence. While providing insight into the lived religious experiences of Catholic women living in Madang, this article shows how Mary empowers her followers to resist violence, yet, at the same time, paradoxically, is instrumental in sanctioning women to tolerate violence. Josephine's ‘journey of violence’ reveals not only Josephine's turning to Mary, but more so, her negotiations with values belonging to different cultural logics. Caught between ‘tradition’, Christianity and ‘modernity’, Josephine and other Catholic women engage in painful processes of self‐analysis and self‐transformation to adapt to and change their situation. In these processes, Mary is used as a role model.

Subsidies, selectivity and the returns to education in urban Papua New Guinea

There is debate about whether the rate of return to education in developing countries declines with the level of schooling. This paper reports evidence from urban Papua New Guinea which shows that the average private rate of return to an additional year of education rises with the level of education considered. This pattern is robust to the specification of the extended earnings function and is strengthened when the measure of employee compensation includes fringe benefits. The results are not sensitive to controls for sample selectivity bias and the estimated selectivity effects are more consistent with the principle of comparative advantage than is existing evidence from developing countries. The returns to on-the-job training are also higher than indicated by previous evidence in developing countries.

Reto's Chance: State and Status in an Urban Papua New Guinea Settlement

ABSTRACTAccording to the ‘state‐in‐society’ model developed by Joel Migdal, states cannot be analytically regarded as separate from the societies they govern and have to be viewed in their social contexts. Migdal's model has been well received by scholars discussing governance and, especially, social control, in Melanesia. An anthropological qualification which could be applied to the model is that local elements of state in Melanesia are socially permeable, since their employees are likely to come from the communities they serve. This permeability arguably contributes to a mutually transformative relationship between state institutions and local groups whose praxis is informed by exigencies of kinship and community.Heuristically viewing the colonially planned ‘village court system’ in Papua New Guinea as an element of state in terms of Migdal's model, this paper presents a narrative of the appropriation of a village court into community sociality and individual aspirations for status in an urban settlement in Port Moresby. Ethnographically, it suggests that an application of the state‐in‐society model in the Papua New Guinean context, at least, must allow recognition of the way colonially and neo‐colonially introduced institutions have been appropriated into the praxis of local communities, and thus must preserve a sense of the transformations both of the institutions and the social life of those communities, to be analytically viable.

From Rolling Thunder to Reggae: Imagining Squatter Settlements in Papua New Guinea

As Papua New Guinea's well-publicized "law and order" problem continues unabated, calls are often made for the destruction of squatter settlements and the dispersal of their inhabitants as a solution to urban crime. This article examines the popular imagery of urban "squatter settlements" in Papua New Guinea, which represents them as criminogenic habitats of unemployed and impoverished migrants. The imagery is generally as misleading as that of squatter and shanty environments elsewhere in the third world—a topic that is familiar in critical academic literature. But it is argued here that the shared imagery cannot be submitted to an analysis that simply draws on political-economic generalizations about housing and marginalization in "developing" nations. The notion of squatter settlements in the independent nation of Papua New Guinea has a specific origin in the imagination and attitudes of Europeans in the preceding colonial period. The historical transformations through which the imagery has been perpetuated are examined to understand how present-day urban Papua New Guineans can continue to demonize settlements in the face of lived experience that contradicts this censorious discourse.

After the ‘Raskol’ Feast

Youths’ alienation from both the exchange networks of their kin and the wage economy in urban Papua New Guinea depletes their spirit and will, thereby challenging that aspect of personal identity which establishes their relations to others. Their thefts, violence and gluttony exceed conventional habits of consumption and distinguish many youth as ‘rascals’ (in Tok Pisin, raskols), who have ‘no shame nor respect’ ( nogat sem). In this article I analyse the practice of excessive consumption in light of the ethos of sem amongst kin in village mortuary feasts and amongst friends in urban settlements, thereby showing that nogat sem approximates the condition of alienation in Melanesia. By assessing consumption theory in light of its ability to account for alienation, I conclude that practices of consumption not only produce and reproduce mutually recognized hierarchical relations, but also fracture those relations and dismember the actors’ identities.

Diet in an urban Papua New Guinea population with high levels of cardiovascular risk factors

Usual food consumption patterns and nutrient intakes were estimated by food frequency questionnaire in the urban Wanigela people of Koki in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea (PNG). This group is characterised by a high prevalence of non‐insulin‐dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM) and risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD). Dietary data were available for 285 subjects, 38% of subjects attending a larger health survey: the study group was considered representative of the Koki population. Mean energy intakes, 11.5 mJ in men and 10.5 mJ in women, were in excess of estimated requirements, especially in women. Fat intake was predominantly saturated and although the percentage contribution was relatively low, the absolute intake was close to the level estimated for individuals consuming the recommended proportion of fat at an energy intake to maintain a healthy weight. Levels of body mass index (BMI), waist/hip ratio (WHR), fasting and 2‐hour glucose and insulin, triglycerides, cholesterol, systolic and diastolic blood pressure and modernity score were not different across tertiles of dietary fat content, energy intake or energy‐adjusted fat intake in men, but modernity score tended to increase with fat intake in women. Fibre intake was surprisingly low given the relative importance of local starchy staples which contributed to a high intake of total and complex carbohydrate. Cooking bananas and white rice were the main sources of energy and carbohydrate, fresh fish was the main protein source, and most of the fat in the diet was from coconut products, representing a diet transitional between a traditional coastal diet and a modern western diet. With continuing modernization and increasing dependence on imported foods it seems likely that many communities in PNG will experience increases in the prevalence of NIDDM and CVD.

The use of ethnography and structured observations in the study of risk factors for the transmission of diarrhea in highland Papua New Guinea.

Methods that combine anthropological and epidemiological data are needed for the study of behavioral risk factors in communicable diseases, but as yet remain undeveloped. Ethnography is often undervalued as both the preliminary and integrative step in the design and execution of such studies. The analysis of critical methodological issues emerging from a case-control study of the behavioral and environmental risk factors for the transmission of childhood diarrhea in both urban and rural highland Papua New Guinea suggests that focused ethnographic assessments, complemented by structured observations performed by nonprofessionals, may provide a viable research design. In highland Papua New Guinea, significant risk factors include non-usage of latrines and sleeping with pigs; the latter is a factor that could have important implications regarding women's roles in a changing economy.

Displacing Culture: A Joke of Significance in Urban Papua New Guinea

Trobriand Islands of Papua New Guinea. We don't really expect to get these jokes. They issue, after all, from the land of the archetypally Other, as we know it from colonial and postcolonial ethnographies. Yet to the extent that we find the right questions to ask-questions (such as Cottom's) that allow us to enter the of their cultural significance-we stand to gain an appreciation of these jokes as historically specific ideological formations, and an appreciation also of how, as events play in the interstices of culture, joking performances come to challenge the notion of culture as a closed system of meanings. This is the problem: to show how joking significance operates, by deferral and by displacement, as a political action of self-other exchange; to show furthermore how this action has a torsional relation to cultural authorityindeed, potentially at least, is subversive of such.2 We turn, then, to the phenomenon Trobrianders label Bau jokes, beginning with three narrated texts. 1. Two Bau men and the young son of one of them set out for the day to go fishing. The men stop at the top of a cliff. The little boy complains that he is cold and his father tells him to go warm himself in the sea. Time passes and the other man wonders if the child is all right. The father goes to the water's edge, and looking down, sees the little boy floating face up under the water, the smile

Income Effects on Undernutrition

Income Effects on Undernutrition

Book reviews

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