Paper short abstract:

This paper looks at the discourses of shame in the Goroka market that maintain a gender divide both within and outside of the market and along certain foods. I will look at what situations mean that men override the Melanesian construct of shame and sell food in the market regardless.

Paper long abstract:

The Goroka marketplace has been a space occupied mainly by women selling their fresh food produce since its beginnings in 1957. Highland's ideologies of gender have contributed and legitimised this, whilst the state's management of the space is entirely carried out by men - engendering the marketplace with multiple power hierarchies. To sell fresh produce in the market is something perceived as shameful to many men in the highlands. However men make up roughly 10% of market vendors and this appears to be on the increase. The men that do sell food in the market often justify overcoming initial embarrassment through terms of making 'a good life'. This paper will examine the kinds of narratives that are used to justify why marketing of fresh produce is the pursuit of women, particularly mothers, and not men and how these are contented with modern discourses of aspiration. Overall the notion of 'sem' (Tok Pisin for shame or shyness) that is given to explain why men do not sell in the market is due, in part, to concerns about a public recognition of poverty. Yet the men gaining a monetary income from selling in the market is understood as preventing them from suffering such poverty that others are shameful of. Selling in the market does not necessarily challenge broader constructions of gender, but does demonstrate some of the ways in which gender as actions, as understood by Strathern (1988), can be blurred through economic activity.