One Hundred Years of Land Reform on the Gazelle Peninsula: A Baining Point of View

Colin Filer, Michael Lowe

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

    Abstract

    People who write about customary land in Papua New Guinea commonly make the observation that it accounts for ninety-seven per cent of the country’s surface area. If they are right, then the ‘bare facts’ of land tenure have not changed since Independence in 1975. In fact they are wrong, but the appearance of a static division of space continually motivates a debate about what (if anything) should be done about the ‘mobilization’ of customary land to facilitate ‘rural development’. Behind the ideological trappings of this argument, we find a rather curious double movement: on the one hand a substantial increase in the proportion of ‘customary’ land which is subject to specific forms of modern property right; and on the other, a simultaneous increase in the area of ‘alienated’ land subject to successful rental claims by customary landowners. In this chapter we investigate one case of this double movement on ‘alienated’ land claimed by the Kakat Baining people of East New Britain to illustrate some of the contradictions embedded in arguments about the relationship between ‘land mobilization’ and ‘rural development’.
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationOwnership and Appropriation
    EditorsV. Strang and M. Busse
    Place of PublicationOxford
    PublisherBerg Publishers
    Pages149-170
    Volume1
    Edition1st
    ISBN (Print)9781847886842
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2011

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