ABSTRACT

In its landscape, history, culture and economic development Papua New Guinea is one of the most diverse countries in the world, and has experienced late contact, late development and late independence. It became independent in 1975 with a largely agricultural economy; now the economy is primarily dependent on the export of gold, oil and other minerals, but subsistence agriculture, hunting and gathering remain important in most places. The first Foreign Minister, Sir Albert Maori Kiki, subtitled his autobiography Ten Thousand Years in a Lifetime (1963), a reflection of the rapidity of recent change. Despite the continued significance of subsistence economies throughout the country PNG is embedded in a global economic, cultural and political system, though there is debate on the extent and significance of globalisation. PNG is peripheral in the sense that foreign investment is concentrated in resource-based, export-oriented activities like mining and forestry. There is minimal internal economic hegemony and only rare attempts, many unsuccessful, to flex national muscles against transnational

corporations. The dominance of this export economy is particularly striking where most people largely live with few of the benefits of modern technology but are greatly influenced by it. Throughout the country modernity has resulted in a disjuncture between space and place. In pre-modern times these largely coincided, since the spatial dimensions of social life were dominated by localised activities. External links were tenuous and often highly dangerous, epitomised by the ‘barter markets’ where ‘traders laid down their goods and withdrew to a safe distance while the exchange was made’ (Gewertz 1978). Modernity and migration disrupted the relationship between space and place. Subsequently, economic relationships, notably commodity sales and trade store purchases, have influenced local life for almost every Melanesian society. However, the introduction into villages of the money acquired elsewhere frequently generated an expansion of the villagebased gift economy (Gregory 1982; Carrier and Carrier 1989; Foster 1995), as people entangled, and made sense of, their relations with capitalism. More directly the village trade stores have become the final points of distribution in the world system; their goods, with their distant origins, are the symbols and substance of the diverse structure of incorporation and accommodation. Ineluctably ‘cash was more of a necessity than people wanted it to be’ (Finch 1989:272), as they absorbed the notions of progress and development. Place has become ‘increasingly phastasmagoric’ (Giddens 1992:19) as localities have become thoroughly penetrated and influenced by external economic and cultural influences, whose genesis and local ramifications are often beyond comprehension.