George N. Curry

Moving Beyond Postdevelopment: Facilitating Indigenous Alternatives for "Development"

Using the example of smallholder oil-palm production in Papua New Guinea, this article illustrates how elements of a market economy and modernity become enmeshed and partly transformed by local place-based nonmarket practices. The persistence, even efflorescence, of indigenous gift exchange, in tandem with greater participation in the market economy, challenges conventional notions about the structures and meanings of development. The introduced market economy can be inflected to serve indigenous sociocultural and economic goals by place-based processes that transform market relations and practices into nonmarket social relationships. These kinds of inflections of the market economy are common and widespread and therefore worthy of consideration for their theoretical insights into processes of social and economic change and the meanings of development. The article concludes by outlining some preliminary thoughts on how development practice could be modified to provide more scope for this process of inflection, so that development strategies accord better with indigenous sociocultural meanings of development.

Markets, social embeddedness and precapitalist societies: the case of village tradestores in Papua New Guinea

Abstract The village tradestore in rural Papua New Guinea is a physical expression of modernity in the heart of the village and is symbolic of the new economic and social formations associated with incorporation. This paper examines how the village tradestore is positioned in relation to these processes of change by considering the management and operation of several tradestores in the Wosera sub-district, East Sepik Province. The paper reports on the ways in which values, relationships and behaviours associated with both the introduced market economy and the precapitalist socio-economy become articulated through the ostensibly modern phenomenon of tradestores.

Doing "Business" in Papua New Guinea: The Social Embeddedness of Small Business Enterprises

Abstract Small-scale village businesses in PNG often become insolvent because the revenue, stock and cash normally earmarked for input costs are frequently redirected to the indigenous non-market economy. Many businesses are established primarily for facilitating gift exchange and enhancing the social status of their proprietors and investors, with the profit motive subordinated to these objectives. The important role of village enterprises in meeting indigenous socio-economic objectives means they are rarely profitable and must be subsidised with remittances from migrants or the income from cash cropping. These issues are explored in relation to wage labour, tradestores and cash cropping. A typology of enterprises is presented to illustrate how the characteristics of particular types of enterprises determine whether or not they will be able to accommodate the demands of the indigenous socio-economy while remaining solvent. Typically, businesses which require costly inputs and loanrepayments for their ongoing operations are less likely to be sustainable.

Full Circle or Spiralling Out of Control?: State Violence and the Control of Urbanisation in Papua New Guinea

There is an administrative reluctance to recognise the permanency of urban settlement in Papua New Guinea. This reluctance, evident since the 1960s, has been characteristic of both the colonial and post-colonial administrations. Opposition to some facets of urbanisation continues today, despite growing population and land pressures in most rural areas and real problems of landlessness emerging in particular rural areas. Colonial control of urban populations has been replicated in contemporary times, often in more draconian form. Eviction of urban settlers has been tied to issues of crime and urban respectability, and lingering perceptions that Melanesians should be rural residents. The growth of informal settlements and urbanisation are not seen as issues of urban planning, nor is the context of urban migration linked to socioeconomic inequality, hence other forms of urban policy are largely absent. Strengthening alliances between land-owners and the state (especially police and provincial administrations) have thus emphasised intraurban inequality and hampered national development.

Development Implications of the Engagement with Capitalism: Improving the Social Returns of Development

Purpose – The authors conclude the “Engaging with Capitalism” volume with a discussion of social theory focusing on the implications of the volume for practices in international and community development.Approach – This chapter draws together some of the key themes in this collection to identify the development implications of the efforts of local communities to socially embed their engagement with capitalism and markets to better serve their socioeconomic and cultural needs. Discussion is informed by the literature on social embeddedness of economies, critical development theory, and the authors’ ongoing empirical research in rural Papua New Guinea.Findings – There is growing recognition within anthropology and geography of the enduring influence of indigenous social and economic practices and values and their capacity to condition the introduced market economy and capitalist economic practices. The chapters in this collection, from the “Engaging with Capitalism” sessions of the 2011 and 2012 ASAO conferences, speak to this issue directly by exploring how indigenous forms of socioeconomy interact with introduced capitalist and market processes to influence sociocultural and economic change at the local level.Research and social implications – The challenge for development researchers is how to conceptualize local engagements with capitalism, and to identify how such concepts and concerns might be applied in development practice to better serve the needs of local communities. We outline some key principles that could be incorporated into development planning to make development projects more sustainable and better tailored to the needs of recipient communities.

Introduction: enacting modernity in the Pacific?

Rural and urban communities in the culturally and economically diverse Pacific region are experiencing significant economic, environmental and social change as they grapple with the challenges and opportunities of globalisation, modernity and environmental change. Earlier views of an inevitable and linear transformation of indigenous societies as they became incorporated through globalisation of economies, societies and cultures are now giving way to more nuanced understandings of the complexities of change and the importance of local agency in shaping the direction and pace of change. With greater attention to local-level factors and the role of agency, the notion of pre-determined outcomes is being questioned by the recognition that change is neither unidirectional nor, indeed, a scripted transition from a pre-capitalist economy to a capitalist one or from tradition to modernity; rather, the outcome is messier and the indeterminacy of the encounter with various notions of capitalism means that a diversity of local outcomes is to be expected. A challenge is how to conceptualise and understand these processes at various scales, and the relationships across scales, and in quite different places. The geographer’s task, then, is to disentangle these multiple processes and logics to understand how these diverse modernities are created and what they mean for, and how they are valued by, local communities experiencing and contributing to these changes. The papers in this issue, which emerged mainly from a special session on ‘Migration, Land and Livelihoods’ at the 2009 annual IAG conference, all adopt a local-level approach to explore processes of change in some of the countries to Australia’s north, although all are cognisant of macro-level processes and how they interact with local-level factors to shape social and economic outcomes at the local level. Whilst migration and access to land are common threads to this collection, the papers make a broader contribution to ideas and concepts in development, particularly to recent ideas on the enduring influence of indigenous economic and social forms and their role in creating alternative modernities.

Sik Bilong Ples: an Exploration of Meanings of Illness and Well-Being Amongst the Wosera Abelam of Papua New Guinea

This paper examines indigenous concepts of health and well-being amongst the Wosera Abelam, East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea. Indigenous conceptual frameworks for understanding human well-being are remarkably resilient despite the use of western medical services and nutritional advice from health clinics. Their resilience is probably attributable to their embeddedness within a wider worldview that emphasises the social context of health and well-being and thus makes them resistant to change. Whilst the Wosera Abelam are open and receptive to modern health services, their response to these services remains considerably influenced by indigenous concepts of health and illness.

Changing Land Tenure and Informal Land Markets in the Oil Palm Frontier Regions of Papua New Guinea: the challenge for land reform

Abstract This paper reports on the authors’ ongoing research with agricultural extension services, customary landowners and migrant farmers to develop a template for a Land Usage Agreement (LUA) that seeks to reconcile customary landowners’ and migrants’ differing interpretations of the moral basis of land rights. The LUA shows a way forward for land reform that builds on customary tenure while strengthening the temporary use rights of migrants to enable them to generate viable and relatively secure livelihoods. The paper concludes that land tenure reform should draw on what is already happening on the ground, rather than impose external models that do not accord with local cultural mores about the inalienability of customary land and its enduring social and cultural significance for customary landowning groups.

From The Turnaround To The Backlash: Tourism And Rural Change In The Shire Of Denmark, Western Australia

The slow, problematic and frequently unsuccessful development of the timber, agricultural and fishing industries in the Denmark area in the early part of the century is contrasted with the rapid postwar growth of tourism and other economic activities. The planning conflicts and problems stemming from this change in the districts economic and demographic fortunes are then considered.

Structure And Change In A Local Holiday Resort: Peaceful Bay, On The Southern Coast Of Western Australia

Most of the literature dealing with holiday resorts focuses on high impact, mass market destinations like the south-east coast of Queensland, Bali and other major tourist attractions. Relatively little attention is given to the low profile holiday resort patronised by local holiday-makers taking a relaxed vacation with family and friends. Such resorts may not appear important to tourism researchers as they have a lower impact on their host communities, they do not provide much in the way of facilities or packaged entertainment for the traveller, and they are not featured in the glossy travel literature. Nevertheless, low profile holiday resorts have an important function, satisfying a legitimate market niche. Moreover, perhaps unfortunately for their traditional patrons, these resorts eventually tend to be ‘discovered’ by a wider clientele and their intrinsic character changes.