Paper short abstract:

This paper examines contests over the meaning of customary displays performed at the annual PNG Mask Festival and disputes over the location of the festival as manifestations of growing distrust of an emerging elite.

Paper long abstract:

The annual Papua New Guinea Mask Festival is held each summer in the town of Rabaul, the former capital of East New Britain Province until its partial destruction by a volcano in 1994. The festival is organised by the PNG government's National Cultural Commission as a key part of its mission statement to, 'preserve and protect culture in PNG', yet it is also explicitly envisaged as a potential tourist attraction. The event is always controversial at a local level. As might be expected there are often considered to be tensions between the two stated purposes of the event, with local critics questioning the extent to which an event designed to attract tourist dollars preserves rather than damages custom. In particular, the participation of the tubuan, a masked dancing figure of a secret male society of the local Tolai people provokes particular concern; tubuans are considered to have important work to do in marking the relationships between clans at mortuary events and the propriety of raising them when they 'have no work to do' is questioned.

This is not the only controversy surrounding the festival however. Since the eruption, the provincial capital has been moved to the nearby town of Kokopo, provoking much anger amongst those, especially expatriate Australians, who have commercial interests in Rabaul. They doubt the claims that Kokopo is physically safer and suspect corrupt financial motives on the part of government bureaucrats. Sometimes reasons are found to suggest moving the Festival to Kokopo which provokes fury amongst these interest groups, especially those involved in the hotel and tourism industries.

These two controversies may seem to be unrelated, yet I argue that they both speak to a sense of unease about the nature of economic relations in the post-disaster environment. The first controversy speaks to a rapidly growing consciousness of economic differentiation amongst grassroots Tolai of which a feeling that powerful elites are commercialising custom is a central part. The second controversy speaks of a sense amongst a previously economically powerful, but now marginalised group that the disaster has become an opportunity to reorganise the economy away from the commercial vitality of Rabaul towards an economy dominated by corrupt bureaucrats doling out aid money in Kokopo. In both cases the contest over the location and meaning of the attempts to draw tourists to the area at the Festival can be understood as a central part of a wider struggle to renegotiate economic relations in the immediate context of post-disaster reconstruction and the wider context of ongoing neo-liberal globalisation.

E-paper: this Paper will not be presented, but read in advance and discussed

Paper Download (42 KB)