Dispossession and the Environment: Rhetoric and Inequality in Papua New Guinea

Leonard Hastings Schoff Lectures

by Paige West

When journalists, developers, surf tourists, and conservation NGOs cast Papua New Guineans as living in a prior nature and prior culture, they devalue their knowledge and practice, facilitating their dispossession. Paige West's searing study reveals how a range of actors produce and reinforce inequalities in today's globalized world. She shows how racist rhetorics of representation underlie all uneven patterns of development and seeks a more robust understanding of the ideological work that capital requires for constant regeneration.

Genres: Nonfiction, Anthropology, History, Cultural, School

216 pages, Paperback

Published October 11, 2016

About the author

Mixed Greens , The West Collection , Art Addict

Reviews

[Rémi · Rating 4 out of 5]

So interesting!!

[Auj]

i am an academic WEAPON

[Daphne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anthropology and the way it is used to raise awareness and "produce" knowledge about a people has the potential to change power relations. Papua New Guinea, a country of 850 languages and 10% of species on Earth, remains deeply misunderstood and othered. I learned a lot from this book, and see it as an important counterpoint within anthropology, a field that has swarmed to Papua New Guinea for its social, ethnic, and biological diversity, often extractively and with racist undertones.

West does a powerful job of shedding light on patterns of colonial dispossession in Papua New Guinea: of sovereignty, land, and culture. She does so not only through European/American analytical lenses and ways of knowing, but draws on Papua New Guinean perspectives: recognizing the intertwined nature of humans with each other and other species, which blurs the lines between individuals (describes as socially embedded "dividuals") and enables a deep connection to land and forests across generations: now being eroded by settler narratives, market capitalism, and Christianity.

Given how conscious West is about centering Papua New Guinean perspectives, I hope that she shares the credit and makes what is a pretty dense book accessible to the people involved - which gets at my love-hate relationship with anthropology. So often it uses scholarly language to theorize about inequality and anti-elite sentiments, delivering hard truths but with vocabulary only accessible to the elite.

The chapter on capacity-building interventions imposed by development funders and BINGOs in the Global North definitely hit home. I deal with the same usual suspects, imposed agendas, and power and pay disparities in my own work in the conservation sector. In Papua New Guinea, and so many other places, grants by multilaterals and major development finance institutions are awarded to BINGOs and foreign experts, with comparatively little money going to local organizations or communities - often with national NGOs subcontracted without real decisionmaking power, and at a small fraction of the pay.

Reading this helps me see more clearly than ever what needs to change in my own practice. It renews my resolve to ensure that the interventions I support elevate local and indigenous priorities and knowledge, and to push for structural change wherever possible.

[Peter Murray · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting introduction to those not familiar with the subject about how Westerners' interpretation of indigenous peoples and places are just that - interpretations, not realities - and how these Western narratives can and have paved the way for a commodity mindset and colonial-type dispossessions. West challenges us to reject the linear model of development where traditional societies like those in the highlands of Papua New Guinea are at the low end of 'progress' and Westerners at the advanced end. She challenges us to consider a value in these traditional societies that is not defined by economics.

The text can be a little think with jargon and challenging for the non-anthropologist. Lots of typos also shows more editing would have been welcome.

[Kat Foster · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such an interesting approach to poverty, and a different interpretation to poverty.

[Pernille · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a syllabus in sosant1000, it was demanded that I read this. However, I really like the way it was written and the cases were so different that I really enjoy the reading.

[Emmanuel Magdalene · Rating 5 out of 5]

a great piece of anthropology