Urban villages of Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea

Michael Goddard

Research program: Mobility and Exclusion

In recent years I have concentrated my research on the National Capital District of PNG, and in particular on the so-called “settlements” of Port Moresby, the capital city. I have also been doing research in a traditional village on the edge of the city, to examine the effects of urbanization on the villages perception of itself as a ‘traditional’ community. In writing about Port Moresby I try to show the social environment of people who are obliged in their day-to-day life to negotiate the urban legacy of the colonial past. I am concerned to correct common misapprehensions particularly about the nature of Port Moresby's less formal habitats, the “urban villages” and “settlements” (the latter often denigrated as “squatter” settlements). I try to convey some sense of the background and contemporary sociality of these urban peoples, displacing popular generalizations with more detailed accounts which do justice to their vitality, their resilience, and their creative responses to the problems of living in a burgeoning Melanesian city. I published a book on the subject in 2005, titled The Unseen City (Pandanus Books), and am presently editing a volume with contributions by several social scientists who have done fieldwork in Port Moresby (working title Villagers and the City). I also do research on Papua New Guinea’s ‘Village Court’ system, a “grassroots” justice system which was set up by legislation in the 1970s, at the end of the colonial era. There are about 1100 village courts throughout the country. The courts provide a focus for understanding the problems of everyday life in contemporary PNG. The petty disputes they adjudicate -- accusations of insult, petty theft, sorcery, assault, adultery, among other things -- reflect wider social conflicts experienced by grassroots people. I have a book forthcoming on this subject, titled Substantial Justice (Berghahn Books).