House Types of Papua New Guinea's Kasakana

This study examines the cultural and environmental interrelationships involved in the form and function of houses built by the Kasakana of Papua New Guinea. Despite Western contact, their houses continue to reflect the importance of certain established interrelationships     

Research and Rhetoric on Women in Papua New Guinea's Village Courts

This paper addresses a recent and popular rhetoric in academic literature that women are discriminated against, often in the name of ‘custom‘, in the male‐dominated village courts of Papua New Guinea. The rhetoric is interrogated with reference to academic research findings and reports since the early days of the legislatively introduced village court system, and to data from the author's own research in recent years. On the basis of these two sources, it is argued that the evidence does not support the rhetoric, and further that the latter does less than justice to grassroots women in Papua New Guinea by portraying them as relatively passive victims of village courts. On the contrary, fieldwork research findings indicate that women are confident and reasonably successful disputants and that village courts are a community‐level resource which is becoming increasingly useful for grassroots women with limited avenues for seeking justice and recompense.     

From the Grassroots: Bernard Narokobi and the Making of Papua New Guinea's Constitution

ABSTRACT

Bernard Narokobi's concept of the Melanesian Way was influenced by a variety of factors, including his own childhood in the village, his religion, and the understandings of the people around him. He also drew inspiration from his exposure to the views and opinions of the many Papua New Guineans who contributed to the work of the Constitutional Planning Committee (CPC) between 1972 and 1975 when he served as a consultant to the committee. He shared the belief in a specifically ‘Melanesian’ way of social organization and cosmological understanding with the others who took part in the CPC's work, most prominently its de facto chairman, Father John Momis. With Momis he drew on the people's contributions to formulate PNG's National Goals and Directive Principles, which, at least in part, embody Narokobi's understanding of what it is to be Melanesian.     

Seeking a New Materialism in Australian History

Labour and economics are traditional strengths of Australian history, though in recent decades cultural history has instead dominated historical practice. This article discusses the relationship between the economic and cultural in Australian history, utilising our own research as case studies that explore reasons to combine the structural and discursive. Inspired by settler colonial studies and other developments internationally, we propose a new historical materialism for Australian history. In particular, we argue for an increased attention to economic questions and data in combination with cultural history sources and analysis; for the greater historicisation of capitalism as itself a specific and contingent phenomenon; and for the application of Marxist tools, without discarding the lessons of the cultural turn and their specific value to Australian history.