imagining local and global actors at the porgera gold mine, enga province

436 Pages·2006·1.55 MB·English

by  Kate A. Lingley

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
MAKING THE IPILI FEASIBLE: IMAGINING LOCAL AND GLOBAL ACTORS
AT THE PORGERA GOLD MINE, ENGA PROVINCE, PAPUA NEW GUINEA
VOLUME ONE
A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO
THE FACULTY OF THE DIVISION OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY
BY
ALEX GOLUB
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
MARCH 2006
Copyright © 2006 by Alex Golub
Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this dissertation
provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.

To Kate
Whose healthy and practical empiricism
has long been an indispensable balance-wheel
for an incurable theorist
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. Introduction............................................................................................................11
The Mine, the Ipili, and Port Moresby.................................................................14
The Ipili.........................................................................................................20
The Nation....................................................................................................30
Engineering and Semiosis: Keeping the Mine Open............................................34
Imagining Local Actors: Making the Ipili Feasible......................................38
Imagining Global Actors: Who Are 'the Global'?.........................................44
From Simplification to Subsumption............................................................47
Personation and Impersonation.....................................................................51
Taking Big Actors Seriously: Synopticism and Irreduction.........................53
Conflicting Structures of Agency.................................................................56
Plan of the Dissertation.........................................................................................66
II. The Yakatabari Negotiations...............................................................................68
Conjunctures and Stakes.......................................................................................71
The Context of the Negotiations...................................................................72
Representatives.....................................................................................................82
The Mine.......................................................................................................82
Landowners...................................................................................................86
The Government...........................................................................................89
The Structure of the Meetings in Theory and in Practice.....................................94
The Meetings in Practice..............................................................................96
The Course of the Negotiations............................................................................99
The First Phase: Negotiating with Community Affairs........................................99
23 November Meeting................................................................................102
9 December Meeting...................................................................................107
The Yunarilama Drainage Tunnel and the Deadline for the Agreement............116
The Letter....................................................................................................117
The Deadline Approaches...........................................................................119
20 January Meeting.....................................................................................121
The Deadline Comes and Goes...................................................................122
The District Administrator's Letter.............................................................124
The Mine Goes Door to Door.....................................................................126
vi
The Tunnel Surfaces, Literally...........................................................................128
24 March Meeting with the Secretary.........................................................131
The Lawsuit................................................................................................147
Ministerial Involvement and Internal Politics....................................................154
The Anawe Spill.........................................................................................160
Conclusion..........................................................................................................162
III. The History of Feasibility.................................................................................165
A History of Legibility?......................................................................................166
The Contact Period.............................................................................................169
The Strickland Syndicate....................................................................................175
Porgera as an Uncontrolled Area........................................................................179
Alluvial Miners...........................................................................................180
The Legal Status of Early Mining...............................................................184
Government Patrols....................................................................................186
Indigenous Miners......................................................................................189
Derestriction.......................................................................................................195
Placer and Exploration........................................................................................203
Feasibility Studies.......................................................................................208
Negotiations........................................................................................................212
The Compensation Agreement...................................................................212
The Relocation Agreement.........................................................................216
The Development of the Development Forum...........................................220
The Forum Process.....................................................................................226
The Signing and the Agreements........................................................................231
Conclusion..........................................................................................................235
IV. Postcolonial Redemptions.................................................................................238
Ipili Cosmology: Energy, Replacement, Embo..................................................242
The Kupiane Story......................................................................................246
Multiple Apocalypses.........................................................................................249
Massive Change..................................................................................................255
Social Change.............................................................................................258
Physical Change..........................................................................................262
Fulfilled Promises, Increased Expectations: Whites and Their World...............268
Dealing with Whites and Their World........................................................274
Whites in Papua New Guinea.............................................................................278
Heading North: Kiaps in Papua New Guinea.............................................281
Postcolonial Disenchantment......................................................................287
Working for the Mine.................................................................................289
Kiap Knowledge.................................................................................................292
The Ipili as Pathological Losers..................................................................296
Conclusion..........................................................................................................302
V. Being Ipili In Porgera.........................................................................................305
Relocation Communities....................................................................................309
Regional Identities and Clan Diasporas..............................................................314
Vertical Expressions of Horizontal Desires........................................................318
Land Ownership..........................................................................................325
Who Lives in Apalaka and Waiwanda...............................................................330
Some Notes on Methodology......................................................................333
vii
Some Basic Census Data............................................................................336
Will the Real Epo Arene Please Stand Up?................................................339
Rentier Leadership......................................................................................343
Arenas for the Claiming of Identity in Porgera..................................................348
Who are the Official Landowners in Apalaka and Waiwanda?..................349
Royalties.....................................................................................................354
Compensation.............................................................................................358
Employment................................................................................................360
Conclusion..................................................................................................364
VI. Conclusion: Policy and Ambiguity..................................................................366
Registering Land and Landowners in Papua New Guinea.................................371
Finding True Land Owners - the View from Port Moresby...............................374
Examples of Land Tenure Issues........................................................................381
Kutubu.........................................................................................................382
Gobe............................................................................................................385
Hides...........................................................................................................386
Mt. Kare......................................................................................................389
Lihir.............................................................................................................390
Tolukuma....................................................................................................392
Frieda..........................................................................................................394
Ramu...........................................................................................................396
Conclusion: Hot Societies, Weak States.............................................................398
What Landowners Know............................................................................409
Bibliography.............................................................................................................413
LIST OF TABLES
Table 1 Total Population of Apalaka and Waiwanda...........337
Table 2 Outsiders living in Apalaka and Waiwanda.............338
“We may not have a mine, but Alex will have one hell of a dissertation.”
-Greg, after a tough round of negotiations
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I have many people to thank. In Chicago, the original members of my dissertation
committee: Marshall Sahlins, Michael Silverstein, and Manuela Carneiro da Cunha. I
also thank Danilyn Rutherford, whose generous help more than offset the fact that she
was the “odd man out” as the late edition to a committee composed of Jewish
Structuralists. Also I thank Martha Nussbaum, who served on the M.A. Committee but
did not continue on to the Ph.D. Anne Chien was on neither and yet made both possible.
Senior students Ira Bashkow and Rupert Stasch helped me with everything from
how to hang mics to where to stay when I arrived in Moresby. Tom Strong and Lise
Dobrin shared their fieldsites with me, as did Debra McDougall, who has been a close
friend and colleague throughout the course of my career. Intellectually, I have profited
from conversations with David Simmons, J Niimi, Seth Saunders, and particularly Jeff
Bennett. Outside of the university, Andrew Huff, Cinnamon Cooper, Nazarin Hamzid,
and the people at Gapersblock.com helped me explore what it means to be a writer rather
than merely an academic. Kevin Caffrey, Alex Meadows, and David Follmer were good
friends. Ken Hopper taught me institutional politics, Jim Nitti taught me the art of the
short con, and AKMA taught me agape.
My fellow Porgera specialists Jerry Jacka and Aletta Biersack were unstintingly
generous, and Glenn Banks must be particularly thanked for his support and the
encouragement he gave this dissertation from its inception to its final draft. I thank the
U.S. Department of Education for Fulbright-Hayes Doctoral Dissertation Research
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