Kinship and relatedness in urban Papua New Guinea

Abstract

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.

Storying Toward Pasin and Luksave: Permeable Relationships Between Papua New Guineans as Researchers and Participants

“…The existence of peoples in context and interaction further solidifies the initial point at which mutual recognition is achieved. Hukula (2017) describes the notions of kinship and relatedness and as such exemplify the concepts of pasin and luksave. In our research, the transnational experience of PNG people living in Australia, engaging as researchers and participants is akin to the experience of trans-local PNG people.…”

Urban Women and the Transformations ofBraedpraes1in Honiara2

“…Writing about Suva, Brison (2017) explains that the use of Facebook among kin has reconfigured kinship ties, which are now more inclusive. Likewise, Hukula (2017) argues that kinship ties in Port Moresby (PNG) are extended to include people sharing one's lifestyle. In Honiara, brideprice is an example of a practice whose meaning is progressively being redefined.…”

Bridewealth a Pardon: New Relationships and Restoration of Good Daughters

“…The notion that an ideal person is autonomous in making a decision to meet her obligations is well recorded. As is the case across PNG, throughout much of the south coast and up into the highlands of PNG, the ideal person is one who enacts his or her social responsibilities through morally acceptable social action and behaviour (Hukula 2017, 2019). Reay's (2014) detailed ethnographic works amongst the Kuma or Minj Agamp people of the Wahgi valley (Reay 2014:Ixv) present important examples of PNG women exerting choice in courtship and eventually in marriage as evidence of a wider range of acceptable gendered behaviour.…”

“…These concepts gain power in concert with previous and new ethnographic works that focus on the story of women's experience. Recent works of PNG scholars Hukula (2012, 2015, 2017, 2019) and Rooney (2017, 2019) use gendered and social relatedness and exemplify how these are important frames to view the experiences of PNG women in contemporary life.…”

“…Where the exchange of bridewealth signifies social cohesion, it also has effects in kinship and affinal relationships that produce social harmony and continuity (LiPuma 1988). In PNG these practices are made within the framework of moral action, or pasin , and reinforced and acknowledged by and through the action and behaviour displayed as part of a person's relatedness to others or luksave (Hukula 2017, 2019). The practice of bridewealth in PNG and across Melanesia is socially significant in that on a micro level it solidifies relationships between men and women by recognizing relatedness between and amongst individuals; while on a macro level, it produces and reinforces important social relationships through recognized moral actions amongst kin and affine or luksave as a matter of gutpela pasin .…”