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This book describes the challenges this young nation state of Papua New Guinea faces in the twenty first century as it strives for economic development and an independent voice in regional and international affairs. These challenges also include the geopolitical context in which China is exerting a growing influence.

In this innovative study, Lea David critically investigates the relationship between human rights and memory, suggesting that, instead of understanding human rights in a normative fashion, human rights should be treated as an ideology. Conceptualizing human rights as an ideology gives us useful theoretical and methodological tools to recognize the real impact human rights has on the ground. David traces the rise of the global phenomenon that is the human rights memorialization agenda, termed 'Moral Remembrance', and explores what happens once this agenda becomes implemented. Based on evidence from the Western Balkans and Israel/Palestine, she argues that the human rights memorialization agenda does not lead to a better appreciation of human rights but, contrary to what would be expected, it merely serves to strengthen national sentiments, divisions and animosities along ethnic lines, and leads to the new forms of societal inequalities that are closely connected to different forms of corruptions.

As the security state grows in power and dominance, commercial and financial interests increasingly penetrate our social existence. Neoliberalism, the Security State, and the Quantification of Reality addresses the relationship between these two trends in its discussion of neoliberalism, financialization, and managerialism, with a particular focus on the decline of professionalism, the restructuring of tertiary education, and the university's abandonment of the humanities. Additionally, David Lea links these developments with the failings of democratic institutions, the growth of the disciplinary society, and the emergence of the security state, which relentlessly governs by extraordinary fiat dividing, disempowering and excluding. Lea identifies one such linkage in the common form of rationality, which underlies contemporary approaches to reality. Others have noted that one of the most notable political developments of the last thirty years or so has been increasing public and governmental demand for the quantification of social phenomena. Moreover, A.W. Crosby has attributed Europe's unprecedented imperial success, which began in early European Modernity, to a paradigmatic shift from a qualitative world view grounded in Platonic and Neo-Platonic idealism to a more quantitative world view. Nevertheless, this quantitative approach towards the natural and social worlds alienates humans from other species and even from ourselves and fails to represent life as we actually experience it. While a quantitative world view may have facilitated imperial success and the interlocking exercise of power and authority by the state and the economically empowered, this instrumental form of thinking rationales, strategies and facilitates policies that restrict and vitiate individual autonomy to create a seamless controlled conformity. This form of thinking that relies on the quantification of natural and social phenomena creates a value free equivalency, which at the same time invidiously divides society into the wealthy and the impoverished, the advantaged and the exploited, the politically included and the excluded. --

Aboriginal entitlement and conservative theory -- Individual autonomy, group self-determination and the assimilation of indigenous cultures -- Shareholder wealth maximization, multinational corporations and the developing world -- Tully and de Soto on uniformity and diversity -- Custom as law -- Papua New Guinea and the legal methods for maintaining customary land tenure -- Customary land tenure in Fiji: a questionable colonial legacy -- The expansion and restructuring of intellectual property and its implications for the developing world -- The myth of free markets: intellectual property the IT industry, and market freedom in the global arena -- From the Wright Brothers to Microsoft: issues in the moral grounding of intellectual property rights -- A delicate balance: the right to health care, IP rights in pharmaceuticals and TRIPS compliance -- Rights and genetic material in agriculture and human research: two forms of biopiracy?

This article considers the relevance of the theories of German jurist Carl Schmitt for understanding Papua New Guinea (PNG) politics and international relations, with a focus on relations with China. In pursuing this analysis, the text gives particular emphasis to Schmitt's friend–enemy distinction. In order to understand the regional context in which China has a growing presence, this article initially highlights the preoccupation of Chinese intellectuals with the ideas of Schmitt. It proceeds to mention the use of Schmitt's ideas in supporting the particular ideological positions of Chinese liberals, the New Leftists, those who articulate the China Path and even the Chinese state. Through a comparative analysis I both compare how Schmittian ideas have been used by Chinese intellectuals to critique the economic inequality in Chinese society and alternatively the relevance of such critiques to the issues of social inequality in PNG. The discussion subsequently focuses on PNG's international relations and China's increasing economic and political influence. While the United States and its regional partner Australia appear to be alarmed by an expanding Chinese presence, others do not necessarily believe that Beijing has overreaching ambitions of global dominance. The article considers the suggestion that Chinese thinking on international relations has been influenced by Schmitt's concept of the Großraum, an alternative to the Westphalian system, in which international relations are marked by a dominant hegemon and self-contained regional blocks consisting of constellated nations. As PNG finds itself in a critical position and subject to pressures from both the West and China, the text considers PNG sovereignty within a possible regional system in which China serves as the dominant hegemon.

Papua New Guinea's rain forest is the third-largest in the world following, the Amazon in South America and those in the Republic of Congo. So as a consequence, it represents a great storehouse of sequestering greenhouse gases, which are pivotal in controlling a rise in global temperature. The activities of the forestry industry have received opposition from environmental groups and the World Bank, but this opposition has not been welcomed by the local communities desirous of the level of development that accompanies logging operations. Recently non-governmental organization publications and media outlets have alleged that Papua New Guinea's loggers are rampantly, increasingly, and illegally destroying the indigenous forests, earning "hundreds of millions in revenue" while refusing to pay taxes. However, it is necessary to gain some perspective on the industry by focusing on the most recent developments regarding the allegations of excessive and increased logging, and the actual revenues paid to the government and other stakeholders. This article considers these issues and recent government policy, particularly underlining the progressive export tax increase from 33percent to 55percent of the free onboard value. This article evaluates the consequences of the Government's policies and suggests alternative ways to achieve sustainable forms of logging, which may also better satisfy the demands for increased development from local communities.

This short piece discusses the historical-sociological relationship between neoliberalism and quantification of data during the corona pandemic crisis.

The article traces the emergence of the novel phenomenon known as "moral remembrance" (MR). MR refers to the standardized set of norms, promoted through the human rights infrastructures of world polity, in which societies are supposed to deal with the legacies of mass human rights abuses. This vision has adopted, over the past forty years, the three main principles of "facing the past," "a duty to remember," and having a "victim-centered approach." Following the emergence of MR, I demonstrate what happens when the human rights–sponsored MR clashes with the nation-state-sponsored memorialization agenda and why decoupling from the "victim-centered approach" results, more often than not, in hierarchies of victimhood and, consequently, the production of new societal inequalities. I suggest here that the relationship between MR and the nationalist use of memorialization processes needs to be understood from the perspective of economic corruption, the politics of opportunism, and competing authorities.

While there is extensive literature on both the expansion of human rights and solidarity movements, and on micro-solidarity and violent actions, here I ask what is the relationship between human rights, micro-solidarity and social action? Based on a case study of structured, face-to-face dialogue group encounters in the Israeli/Palestinian context, I draw on Randall Collins's interaction ritual chain theory to demonstrate why emotional energy and the ritualization of historical narratives have very limited potential to translate into human rights-based moral actions. Instead, I suggest, these encounters produce micro-solidarity that ascribes additional weight to ethnic categories, serving to polarize and homogenize groups along ethnic lines.

Sociology has an important part to play in understanding human rights. In this article, I trace obstacles within sociology to theoretically conceptualize human rights as an ideology. These impediments, I suggest, demonstrate the need to recognize the blind spots within sociological research. However, instead of trying to persuade readers why human rights qualifies as an ideology, I attempt to demonstrate why it is beneficial for sociological inquiry to conceptualize human rights as an ideology. Instead of following the widely accepted practice of understanding human rights as a desirable set of values designed to promote a liberal peace, I propose conceptualizing human rights as an ideology which, through its institutionalization, produces coercive organizational and doctrine power. The question of whether its organizational and doctrine power is capable of value penetration in micro-solidarity groups opens up a new prism through which sociologists can assess the successes and failures of human rights ideology on the ground.