Urbanities,
Vol. 4
·
No 2
·
November 2014
© 2014
Urbanities
108
BOOK REVIEWS
Michael Goddard
(ed.) (2010).
Villagers
and the City. Melanesian Experiences of
Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea.
Sean
Kingston Publishing.
With this edited volume, Michael
Goddard, a long time researcher of urban
Papua
New
Guinea,
shifts
our
anthropological gaze from its previous
focus on rural Melanesian areas, to every
day life in Papua New Guinea’s capital
Port Moresby, or ‘Moresby’. Since much
of the limited anthropological work on
Moresby was conducted between 1960 and
1990, this volume is a welcome showcase
of contemporary research in this city.
For
many
anthropologists
researching Melanesia, cities like Moresby,
Port Vila, and Honiara are, as Goddard
remarks in the Introduction, not at all
“alien and threatening transit point[s] on
their way to and from the ‘field’” (5).
Indeed Goddard emphatically stresses the
point that Moresby, home to more than 50
per cent of the countries’ population,
should be more widely acknowledged by
both anthropologists and Papua New
Guineans as a “real PNG” (5). As Goddard
and the other contributors make clear,
people’s experiences in Moresby are
defined by cosmopolitanism and diversity,
and there is no sense denying it for a
nostalgic view of an ‘authentic’ PNG.
Goddard additionally urges us to
acknowledge that Moresby cannot be
reduced to an image of squatters and
crime.
Three of the seven contributions to
this volume, including the Introduction, are
by Goddard himself. His first substantive
chapter concerns the Motu-Koita, the
original landowners of the area of
Moresby. The chapter focuses on the loss
of Motu-Koita land to PNG migrants to the
area. Through discussion of the native
lands commission, a committee set up to
reclaim or obtain compensation for land
loss, Goddard not only tells the history of
Motu-Koita relationship with Moresby as
it has developed around them, but also
reflects on the invention of this history.
Goddard shows how the winners of the
land claim, not the Moto-Koita, are
rewriting the history of the place by
shifting their previously marginal status in
the local history to one where they are the
original inhabitants of the area.
Goddard’s second chapter compares
PNG marriage practices in the rural areas
to ideas about marriage in Moresby. In the
city, bride price continues to be a defining
characteristic of formal marriage, and cash
bride price payments are categorically
distinguished from other monetary
transactions. Goddard demonstrates that
tensions arise as people negotiate
economic relationships through its
exchange or lack of exchange.
In her contribution, Deborah Van
Heekeren focuses on Vula’a villagers who
live 110 km east of Moresby. She
discusses
Vula’a
moral
attitudes
surrounding
their
economic
and
commercial relationships with people
living in town. Van Heekeren writes that
Vula’a villagers are concerned less with
economic development and more with the
differing values between town and village
economies. Her main point is that both
capitalism (influenced by individualism)
and gift exchange (influenced by
