[ANU Pacific.Institute] Seminar by Ivo Syndicus on the construction of provincial identities at a Papua New Guinean university - May 1

[Alan Rumsey]

Upcoming seminar:

Title: Different practices of exchange and the reification of culture: the construction of provincial identities at a Papua New Guinean university

By Ivo Syndicus
Maynooth University, Ireland


May 1, 9:30-11:00am

Venue: Kambri, Marie Reay 3.03


Abstract
In this paper, based on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in 2013 and 2014, I analyse reflections and experiences of cultural difference across the PNG highlands as articulated among students and staff at the University of Goroka. In a first step, I analyse putatively different sensibilities surrounding exchange and reciprocity across the PNG highlands, especially as they emerge from systematic attention to the representation of differences by interlocutors themselves, and as supported by personal observation. In a second step, I analyse the articulations of differences in sensibilities surrounding exchange and reciprocity as normative reifications of distinct cultural identities in PNG today. Drawing on the observation of provincial student association gatherings at the University of Goroka, and the history of such associations at PNG universities, I illustrate how differences in sensibilities surrounding exchange and reciprocity across the PNG highlands (and beyond) become reified in the articulation of increasingly consolidated provincial cultural identities in PNG. Neither discounting the reality of the differences at stake, nor taking at face value the claim to cultural distinctiveness along administrative boundaries of PNG's highland provinces, I attempt to find ways to make sense of actual differences in sensibilities surrounding exchange and reciprocity, and processes of identity formation in PNG today.

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