The Lihir Destiny: Cultural Responses to Mining in Melanesia

Abstract

This book is primarily about Lihirian responses to large-scale resource development. In the process of writing this book, from its original genesis through to its current form, I have been engaged with Lihirian lives and resource development in several different ways. As such the list of people who have helped me along the way is that much longer. This book originated as my doctoral thesis at the University of Melbourne. My first 18 months of research in Lihir was made possible through financial support from the School of Anthropology, Geography and Environmental Studies. Thanks to the National Research Institute for organising visas and research permits in Papua New Guinea. Throughout my candidature, Monica Minnegal, Peter Dwyer and Mary Patterson provided academic support, constantly challenging me to further develop my ideas and to ask more questions. I owe a great intellectual debt to Martha Macintyre who supervised my doctoral research. Her work in Lihir opened many opportunities for me and has strongly influenced my belief in the need for a genuinely engaged anthropology. Over the years Martha has generously shared her ideas, and provided continuing encouragement and friendship. Ways of transporting goods and people from place to place will be much easier. Each family will have a car of its own. Lihir is going to be full of raskols [petty criminals]. I think in the future many young men and old men will leave their hausboi [men's house] and live only in their high quality permanent buildings. They will find life easier and forget their traditional ways of life. Ways of education will be much different from Although Papua New Guinean students are educated for the first three years in the vernacular, English is the official language used for the remainder of their education. In many cases, the national lingua franca Tok Pisin is more commonly used and more readily grasped. Tok Pisin and Lihirian terms are italicised and listed in separate glossaries. to the performance of mortuary rituals that involve large-scale ceremonial feasting and exchange. In recent years, Lihirian kastom has grown significantly, partly reflecting the capacity of the ceremonial economy to absorb new objects and forms of wealth, while resisting the absorption of values and practices associated with them in the global capitalist economy. But this efflorescence is also due to a mass appeal to kastom for social stability which, like the earlier World systems theory has found new life in grander theories of globalisation which assert that the global envelops the local, creating similarity in the place of alterity. The significant issue in this book is the construction of particularity in the face of apparently homogenising and universalising forces. The discourse of globalisation is often uninformative because of an over-emphasis on global homogeneity. Too often it is assumed that the globalising capitalist economy obliterates local economies, only to remake them in its own reflection. However, as we can see from the students' stories, rega...

Large-scale Mines and Local-level Politics: Between New Caledonia and Papua New Guinea

“…Indeed, organisations established to represent the interests of 'local people' in the negotiation of benefit-sharing agreements are liable to manufacture policies and programs precisely in order to demonstrate their moral superiority over the other parties to the negotiation. A notable example of such activity is the long sequence of policy pronouncements made by the Lihir Mining Area Landowners Association since its formation in 1989, which have certainly seemed like acts of symbolic violence to representatives of the mining company at which they are mainly directed (Filer 1995;Bainton 2010). Beyond the proliferation of actors involved in policy production, agreements themselves can also become the building blocks of policies that change the terms in which the distributional and representational issues are resolved in subsequent agreements (Le Meur, Horowitz et al 2013;O'Faircheallaigh 2013).…”

“…What the authors highlighted was that these intentional forms of development are economically, socially and culturally conservative, and seek to essentially counter the unruly forms of change that immanent development creates. In what follows, we identify a range of corporative initiatives that fit this 2 Lihir is something of an exception to this rule (see Bainton 2010).…”

“…Women continue to bear a heavy load of subsistence agriculture, child-rearing and household work, and this remains the case even when women have paid employment. It is mostly Lihirian men who have moved into positions of authority in negotiations with the mining company, who have positions in the locallevel government (LLG), the Lihir Mining Area Landowner's Association and village development committees, as well as being the ones much more likely to hold more highly paying positions in the mining company, to have their own business or to be on the boards of businesses (Macintyre 2003a;Bainton 2010;Hemer 2013).…”

Social impact assessment, social justice and scales of knowledge: exploring the emerging mining industry in Solomon Islands

“…The Pacific sub-region of Melanesia (see Figure 2-1) has featured extensively in international debates about the contribution of its mining industry to the social, environmental and economic sustainability of the region, and with a specific focus on project-affected communities (key scholars include Emberson-Bain, 1994;Regan, 1998;Filer, 1999;Ballard and Banks, 2003;Horowitz, 2004;Filer and Macintyre, 2006;Bainton, 2010;Banks, 2013;Gilberthorpe, 2013;Kirsch, 2014). While these works focus on extractivism across Melanesia, there is limited scholarly output from a sociological lens (an exception is McKenna, who predominantly focuses on corporate social responsibility, peace building and business practice in Papua New Guinea's mining sector from a sociological perspective).…”

“…On the other hand, research also reveals that communities in Lihir demonstrated lower levels of demand in CSR activities, reportedly due to isolation, homogeneity of culture and a matrilineal society divorced from the mainland (Bainton, 2010). Potential mining development is often framed to bring many opportunities, particularly in the form of business and employment opportunities for local communities and beyond.…”