Markets in Port Moresby like elsewhere in the world provide a space for economic activity and social interaction. This article engages with two moral concerns that arise from the market. Firstly, I present a description of how the ban of the sale of betel nut is being negotiated by vendors and customers alike in the face of threats of violence from enforcement officials such as police. Secondly, I present concerns that arise at the local Village Court, which is also housed at the market. Both activities invoke debate about morality as they raise discussion about citizen and government responsibility, ideas of place and ways of being.
Early anthropological literature on urban Port Moresby (Papua New Guinea) highlights the importance of urban-rural kin connections and the village flows into town and vice versa. While this is still important, this article focuses on contemporary kinship and relatedness in an urban settlement in Port Moresby and how relations there are made evident through everyday actions of exchange and sharing of food, time, and consideration. People in town build kin-like relations using the concept of wan, particularly wantok (same language), wanstrit (same street), and wanlotu (same religion), as they share resources, support neighbourhood marriage and funerary rituals, and as employers and employees become kin. Kinship in Port Moresby, though constrained in many ways, is acted out in forms that are rooted in urban place, space, and home.
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Does Papua New Guinean culture influence the propensity to rape? Or is it the way in which we are socialised that influences how we treat women? Is rape more common among certain ethnic groups? These are some of the questions that have prompted this research. This chapter is based on interviews conducted with convicted rapists who have been detained at Port Moresby's Bomana Prison. It provides some preliminary insights into the type of men who rape and explores issues such as cultural and peer influence.
This chapter discusses the potential for a public Pacific criminology, not as the latest "shiny criminological brand" (Loader and Sparks, 2011), but as an important intellectual and practical agenda. In a region characterized by regulatory pluralism and traditions of local justice innovations, one meaningful contribution such an agenda could make is to re-orient debates on crime, violence and justice towards the contributions to security made by institutions above and below the state. The chapter develops three examples of these, komitis in urban PNG, private policing in PNG, and community by-laws in Vanuatu. We also outline some of the main challenges to such an agenda, including the benefits and drawbacks of a regional framing, noting the importance of context and nuance as well as problems with agendas of exceptionalism. In sum, we conclude that a public Pacific criminology, were one to eventuate, would need to be interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary, have a strong ethical foundation, be founded on an awareness of plurality and recognition of the dynamic and varied configuration of different actors in the security and justice landscape, and involve greater support for Pacific islands research institutions and researchers.
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