Suchergebnisse

MacLeod's (2013) notion of 'cultural realignment' relates directly to the power of the tourism industry to affect the transformation of the lived environment. This paper posits that the ideal visitation involves the transformation of the visitor experience to conform to the cultural landscape and the social dynamics of place. Extending Robbin's(2015)biological notion of resilient island environments as sites of cosmopolitan engagement to the "sacred geographies of island Melanesia" (Bainton, Ballard and Gillespie 2012), I argue that multicultural dimensions of island livelihoods in Papua New Guinea that link trading partners and social relations, such as men's houses, walking tracks, gardens and spirit tracks, provide social infrastructure for managing the opportunities and impositions of tourist encounters. Drawing upon anthropological fieldwork experiences with a colleague in a remote village in the Nakanai Mountain Range of New Britain Island, I situate the idea of cosmopolitan tourism within a mutual concern for the other in the spatial politics of the village. Such cosmopolitan tourisms are not simply products of state or marketbased imperatives but outcomes of intercultural negotiations between visitors and host communities, involving the reconciliation of the goals of visitor with those of the local people. In these spatiotemporal encounters, cosmopolitan tourism can generate reciprocal interdependence and obligation - relationships that are both material and semiotic.It is in this regard that suppressing the distinction between kin and visitor is of central import in defining cosmopolitan tourism in the village context. Papua New Guineans have long negotiated multiple types of social relations within networks of hospitality that have included local visitors, and more distinctly, colonial visitors such as missionaries, patrol officers and researchers. Cosmopolitan hospitality, based upon a mutual ethics of care and concern can help define more equitable forms of tourism in New Britain's ongoing integration into a global tourist economy.

Papua New Guinea's first deep-sea mining project, once touted as the first of its kind in the world, now appears to be "dead in the water." The mining company behind it has been liquidated, the mining equipment has been rendered obsolete, and the host government has been made to look foolish for supporting the enterprise. This paper examines the application of two concepts—that of the "resource frontier" and that of the "actor-network"—to reach an understanding of the history of this apparent failure. By elaborating on the additional concept of a "network junction," it seeks to show how arguments about the feasibility or fallibility of this particular project, and deep-sea mining proposals more broadly, have been related to arguments about a range of other issues in which scientific and technological uncertainties are associated with environmental and social impacts or environmental and political risks. Instead of seeking to explain the failure of this project by reference to the attributes of a specific type of maritime resource frontier, the paper shows how the articulation of different policy networks creates the appearance of a frontier in which human and non-human actors have combined to produce a variety of unpredictable and open-ended outcomes. From this point of view, the history of this project's failure cannot simply be read as the outcome of a contest between two groups of human actors with clearly defined interests or ideologies, nor does it necessarily spell the end of the policy network in which this project has been embedded. (Pac Aff/GIGA)

Papua New Guinea's first deep-sea mining project, once touted as the first of its kind in the world, now appears to be "dead in the water." The mining company behind it has been liquidated, the mining equipment has been rendered obsolete, and the host government has been made to look foolish for supporting the enterprise. This paper examines the application of two concepts - that of the "resource frontier" and that of the "actor-network" — to reach an understanding of the history of this apparent failure. By elaborating on the additional concept of a "network junction," it seeks to show how arguments about the feasibility or fallibility of this particular project, and deep-sea mining proposals more broadly, have been related to arguments about a range of other issues in which scientific and technological uncertainties are associated with environmental and social impacts or environmental and political risks. Instead of seeking to explain the failure of this project by reference to the attributes of a specific type of maritime resource frontier, the paper shows how the articulation of different policy networks creates the appearance of a frontier in which human and nonhuman actors have combined to produce a variety of unpredictable and open-ended outcomes. From this point of view, the history of this project's failure cannot simply be read as the outcome of a contest between two groups of human actors with clearly defined interests or ideologies, nor does it necessarily spell the end of the policy network in which this project has been embedded.

In 2013, the Government of Papua New Guinea identified East New Britain as the country's tourism centre. Tourism operators in the provincial capital welcomed thegovernment's plan, but warned that poor infrastructure and the country's bad image overseas could prevent it from reaping the benefits of 'huge' tourism potential.Landowners in the Tentative World Heritage area of the Nakanai Mountains are keen to tap into the perceived potential of tourism development and are creatively monetising their rugged environment in the hope of attracting tourists for adventure tourism. Thedevelopment of adventure tourism initiatives tap into notions of wild and rugged landscapes, combined with Western fantasies involving travel to dangerous places(mountains, jungles, caves, cascading rivers). We argue that, unless local communities are able to effectively exercise power and control over tourism ventures, the desire to proclaim ecotourism as the ideal alternative form of development risks subsuming local communities and their livelihoods into a future defined primarily by outsiders.