Land, power, change : entanglements of custom and modernity in Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste
Material type
thesisResource type
thesisLanguage
engNotes
This thesis develops a critical account of encounters between customary and modern forms of relationship to land in two Melanesian countries, Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste. Specifically, it asks: what are the implications of these encounters for relations of power? In both Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste, customary land tenures provide the dominant mechanism for the organization of land. Nevertheless, processes of globalization, state- and nation-building are catalysing the extension of modern forms of connection to land, anchored in an understanding of land as property and as an economic resource to be utilized within capitalist, and specifically neoliberal, relations of production and ‘development’. As different forms of connection to land intersect, so too are differing forms of identity and belonging, differing visions of the world and of the self, brought into contestation. Across the thesis, entanglement is developed as a core theoretical concept, speaking to the dynamic and ambivalent nature of this contested social field. Through a metaphor of entanglement, the customary and modern are conceptualized as ontologically distinct patterns of practice and meaning; forms of social relations that cut across the boundaries of social groups rather than being synonymous with them. The thesis argues that the entanglement of customary and modern forms of connection to land destabilise structures of power in ways that create multiple possibilities for their reconfiguration. At a level of generality, there is a dominant tendency towards the diminishing autonomy of local communities, as power and decision-making capacity shifts to the sites, agents and processes of the state and globalising capital, and as customary ways of life—including forms of connection to land—are ideologically and normatively devalued. In theoretical terms, the abstracted nature of modern social relations lends them a coercive capacity over less abstracted, customary ones. Nonetheless, customary forms of sociality are also able to accommodate a considerable degree of abstraction. Entanglements, then, also generate new possibilities for the rearticulation and reassertion of customary connection to land, and of the forms of power and authority to which that connection gives rise.Degree type
Research doctorateDegree name
Ph.DCopyright notice
The authorEditor/Contributor(s)
K Humphrey, D GrenfellFaculty
Faculty of Arts and EducationSchool
School of Global
