What Labour Engenders1: Women and Men, Time and Work in the New Guinea Highlands

Global Environmental Change

Lummani

et al. 2015

A B S T R A C TThe influence of socio-cultural factors on the adaptive capacity, resilience and trade-offs in decisionmaking of households and communities is receiving growing scholarly attention. In many partly transformed societies, where the market economy is not well developed, livelihood practices are heavily structured by kinship and indigenous social and economic values. Farm investment decisions and incentives to produce agricultural commodities are shaped by a host of considerations in addition to market imperatives like profit. In one such partly transformed society in East New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea, we examine the adaptation decisions of smallholders in response to the drastic drop of yield in their cocoa plots caused by the sudden outbreak of Cocoa Pod Borer. To explain why the impact of the pest has been so great we examine the interconnections between household responses, the local sociocultural and economic context of smallholder commodity crop production and the wider institutional environment in which household choices and decisions are made. We argue that the significant lifestyle changes and labour intensive farming methods required for the effective control of Cocoa Pod Borer are incompatible with existing smallholder farming systems, values and livelihoods. To adopt a high input cropping system requires more than a technical fix and some training; it also requires abandoning a 'way of life' that provides status, identity and a moral order, and which is therefore highly resistant to change. The paper highlights the enduring influence and significance of local, culturally-specific beliefs and socioeconomic values and their influence on how individuals and communities make adaptation decisions.

Section: Farmers' Reluctance To Adopt Modern Farming Methodssupporting

confidence: 55%

A bridge too far? The influence of socio-cultural values on the adaptation responses of smallholders to a devastating pest outbreak in cocoa

Global Environmental Change

Lummani

et al. 2015

“…Second, the study suggests that the Theories of Value used to frame much geographical research may not necessarily correspond with the value and values of our research subjects. As Sillitoe (2006, 121) puts it,…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In other words, there may be a disjuncture between research subjects' notions of value and the Theories of Value imposed on them by outside researchers (Sillitoe, 2006). Thus, the concept of a universal source of labour value needs to be re‐examined in favour of other more place‐based conceptions of labour value that emphasise the relational dimensions of economy and indigenous ways of defining value.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These meanings attached to labour in oil palm are similar to the meanings of labour reported elsewhere in PNG (see Modjeska, 1982, 51–65; A. Strathern, 1982; Strathern, 1990; Fajans, 1993; Kuehling, 2005; Sillitoe, 2006). As Strathern observes in her study in the Hagen region of PNG, ‘there is no objectification of work apart from its performance .…”

Section: Oil Palm and Indigenous Concepts Of Labour Valuementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Universal theories of labour value are unable to capture these relational and non‐market dimensions of labour value. As Sillitoe (2006, 143) remarks:…”

Section: Oil Palm and Indigenous Concepts Of Labour Valuementioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Relational Economies, Social Embeddedness and Valuing Labour in Agrarian Change: An Example from the Developing World

2012

Geographical Research

A relatively neglected area of research on agrarian and economic change is the role of indigenous concepts of labour value in the transition from subsistence to market production. In West New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea, the presence of a migrant population on an oil palm land settlement scheme (LSS) in close proximity to village‐based oil palm growers, provided an opportunity to examine changing notions of labour value through the lens of smallholder productivity. Voluntary settlers on the LSS are experiencing population pressure and are highly dependent on oil palm for their livelihoods. In contrast, customary landowners in village settings produce oil palm in a situation of relative land abundance. By examining differences in how these two groups practise and value commodity production, the paper makes four key points. First, concepts of labour value are not static and involve struggles over how labour value is defined. Second, the transition to market‐based notions of labour value can undermine labour's social value with a consequent weakening of social relationships within and between families. Third, Theories of Value developed in western contexts and used to frame development policies and projects in the developing world are often inappropriate and even harmful to the welfare of communities that have different registers of value. Fourth, in response to Point 3, and following Rigg (2007), there is a need for ‘theorising upwards’ using empirical data from the developing world to inform theory rather than applying to the developing world models of sociality and economy developed in western contexts.

Women's and Men's Work: The Production and Marketing of Fresh Food and Export Crops in Papua New Guinea

Inu³

2019

Oceania

Fresh food markets have been a fixture of the social and economic landscape of urban and rural PNG since colonial times. They were often the first points of engagement with the market economy, especially for women, who as small‐scale producers, sold surplus produce from their food gardens located on communally‐owned land. Although local food markets have remained an important livelihood for women, the later adoption and expansion of perennial export cash crops like coffee and cocoa overshadowed food production for local markets as men dominated export crop production on land alienated from communal ownership for decades or permanently. New forms of social relations of production and more exclusive forms of land tenure emerged to accommodate export crop production that were very different from those governing the production and marketing of fresh food. Market values and a trend towards individualisation of production with less capacity to mobilise labour through reciprocal labour exchange networks have characterised export crop production. With the income benefits captured largely by men, women began redirecting their labour to fresh food production where they were able to exercise more control of production and income while still mobilising labour through indigenous labour exchange arrangements. Attempts by men to appropriate the income of women and sons’ labour in export cropping were greater during flush periods when income levels were high, and they were less likely to attempt to appropriate this income in low crop periods when incomes were lower. However, with the recent emergence of female entrepreneurers earning relatively large sums of money in large‐scale, profit‐driven vegetable production, the moral frameworks governing food production are coming to resemble those governing export crops, and making labour more difficult to mobilise. Despite women being key players in these changes, we argue there is an emerging risk that men will attempt to assert control over this income or move into vegetable production themselves and possibly marginalise women in the process.