| Abstract: | The rise of competitive trade practices represents a significant development in Papua New Guinea's marketplaces. Overt competition and haggling, once conspicuous by their near absence, are now commonplace in the country's betel nut marketplaces, and increasingly visible in many of the large urban fresh food marketplaces. This has emerged with the rise of long‐distance and intermediary trading, and with increasing numbers of people dependent on trade for their livelihood. This paper explores moral economy, and the interactions and negotiations around price between lowland betel nut producers and highland wholesale traders as they occur in marketplaces and in rural production areas. It documents how the moral obligations that arise from trade itself, and entangled with self‐interest, tempers competition and fosters solidarity amongst traders, redirects competition onto their interactions with producers, and in doing so reinforces existing power asymmetries. |
