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FACES OF SHAME, MASKS OF DEVELOPMENT: RECOGNITION AND OIL PALM AMONG THE BAINING OF PAPUA NEW GUINEA Inna Yaneva-Toraman PhD Social Anthropology The University of Edinburgh 2019 1 Declaration I declare that this thesis has been composed solely by myself and that no part of it has been submitted in any previous application for a degree or professional qualification. Except where I state otherwise by reference or acknowledgment, the work presented is entirely my own. Signature: Inna Zlatimirova Yaneva-Toraman September 2019, Edinburgh UK 2 3 Abstract This thesis explores the role of “shame” in the Vir Kairak Baining people’s understanding of the relationships that underpin positive social change. Previous studies of shame in the context of colonial and postcolonial transformation in Melanesia have suggested that encounters with outsiders humiliated local communities and incited their cultural and economic conversion. This thesis starts from the position that “shame” could be an inherent feature of and a virtue within a culture that offers both grounds for resisting and prospecting change and development. While previous studies have often discussed “shame” as a negative experience, this thesis argues that among the Vir Kairak Baining people of Papua New Guinea “shame” is cultivated through practice and understood as a highly productive behaviour that enables social ties within the community and forms the basis for development. The study draws on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork, which I conducted mainly in a Vir Kairak rural settlement in central East New Britain. Recently, the Baining region has become central to Papua New Guinea’s rapidly expanding oil palm sector and many local communities have agreed to lease their customary land for the establishment of monocrop plantations. This thesis shows how the transition from smallholder farmers to rentiers occurred as a result of people’s land and market insecurity driven by their resettlement by the Australian administration in the aftermath of World War II and the Cocoa Pod Borer (CPB) blight in 2006. It explores how people envisioned the oil palm plantation and their relationships with the company and the state, what outcomes they imagined for their community and customary land, and how the land-leasing process affected their sociality and identity. It traces the links between notions of landownership, local understandings of shame, and struggle for recognition, through which the Baining people conceive and position themselves in relationships with others and the environment. 4 This thesis argues that whilst Baining experience of shame involves some degree of hiding, it is ultimately about shaping and displaying one in a particular form for others to see. This form enables people to relate in meaningful ways and orient their actions with respect to their future aspirations and expectations from that relationship. The thesis explores the ways in which the Baining make themselves visible and seek recognition by others (such as the state, international corporations, God, provincial bureaucrats, expats, NGO representatives, scientists, tourists, members of other Papua New Guinean and Baining communities) as persons and people with particular kind of capacities, in hopes to re-claim their land and bring development to their community. But drawing on the large body of anthropological literature that has highlighted the “looseness,” “fluidity,” and “instability” of Melanesian social identities, I discuss recognition not merely in terms of recognising individual identity, indigeneity, or legal rights, but as a condition for agency and relationships with others as well as realisation of personhood. I illustrate how people frame their “right to development” and deploy discursive and practical strategies that are shaped by local understandings of shame, in order to establish their recognition as a people, landowners, mask makers, and Christians. By showing the participation in and display of multiple identities by which local people want to be recognised and bring the kind of development they desire, this thesis offers a valuable contribution not only to the wider discussion of recognition and the role of emotions in producing visible and recognisable people and relations, but also to the studies of political ecology and development. 5 Lay Summary This thesis explores the meaning of “shame” and its relationship to ideas about “social identity” and “development” among the Vir Kairak Baining people of Papua New Guinea. It draws on a long-term ethnographic fieldwork carried in a Vir Kairak rural settlement and museum research at the National Museum of Papua New Guinea. The thesis argues that “shame” among the Vir Kairak is a highly productive social behaviour cultivated through practice in everyday-life, through which people exhibit themselves in a desired way and create social relationship. In Vir Kairak society, social relationships are highly valued and crucial for people’s ability to engage in exchange of goods, services, and other types of valuables. Therefore, the thesis argues that people try to attract development aid to themselves and their settlement by creating the right kind of social relationships with significant others such as other Baining and non-Baining communities, government representatives, expatriates, business corporations, and tourism agents. In this way, they believe that they could become visible to and recognised by the state as people possessing a variety of positive attributes and capacities, making them worthy of engaging with and being part of the nation. The thesis explores how the Vir Kairak frame their “right to development” and the things they do to attain their development goals, by looking at the beliefs and practices involved in traditional mask dances, adherence to Pentecostal Christianity, and their clan’s engagement in a massive oil palm plantation project. In this way the thesis traces the links between social identity, customs, local and global economies, landownership, ideas of change, and development. 6 To my mother 7 Acknowledgements I want to thank the Scottish Graduate School of Social Science for the ESRC Grant (ES/J500136/1) that enabled this research, and the University of Edinburgh School of Social and Political Science for its financial support during the first year of my PhD studies. This project was also supported by the Tweedie Exploration Fellowship for Students (2015) and the FfWG Foundation Main Grant (BFWG Charitable foundation) (2017). I am honoured and thankful for their expression of interest and confidence in my work. This project also benefitted from research and academic discussions I conducted at the Australian National University during a one-month Visiting Studentship in 2018, and at the National Museum of Scotland, the Australian National Gallery, and Brisbane Museum where I explored various Baining material and artefacts. I also want to acknowledge the support and permission of the National Research Institute of Papua New Guinea, the National Cultural Commission, the Provincial Government of East New Britain, and the Baining/Qaqet Stewardship Council for this research. I thank the National Museum of Papua New Guinea for their assistance and for facilitating access to their Baining collection, as well as for providing my institutional affiliation for the duration of my research. It is very difficult to express my gratitude to my supervisors. I am immensely grateful and forever indebted to Alice Street, who has been a true mentor, providing rigorous yet invaluable guidance that has shaped not only my research but approach to work and life more generally. Her trust and the time she invested in me has helped me tremendously both in the early stages of this research and later on as I was writing up this thesis. Her insightful feedback has always pushed me to identify the particularities of Baining social life and to communicate my arguments more explicitly. She has taught me to be brave and bold, and to value my work. I am also grateful to Casey High who joined my project after I returned from fieldwork. His enthusiasm about my research has always been encouraging, and his meticulous attention to ethnographic details along with pertinent suggestions for readings from 8 different regions, have greatly contributed to my writing and thinking about the bigger issues. I also wish to thank Dimitri Tsintjilonis for his confidence in my research and I am glad that he was there in the beginning of my PhD journey to guide me and ask the hard questions. Dimitri’s positive attitude, incredible teaching skills, and stimulating conversations nurtured my curiosity and inspired me to pursue a career in anthropology. I also express my gratitude to Aaron Kappeler whose invaluable insight and enquiries at the final stages of my PhD journey have added a new dimension to this thesis. Together, these supervisors have been a wonderful team and I always left our meetings inspired and motivated to do the new bits of work and the next bits of writing. The University of Edinburgh provided a vibrant environment for this project to come to life, and many friends and colleagues in the Department of Social Anthropology have commented on my work and have helped me get through the PhD process.