DESVENTURAS DE LA CONCIENCIA NACIONAL

In Papua New Guinea, and in much of the scholarship about Papua New Guinea, the figure of the ‘Big Man’ is central to descriptions of aspirational masculinity (Clay 1992, Godelier and Strathern 1991, Lindstrom 1981, Zimmer-Tamakoshi 1997). The historic role of men as leaders in clans and communities varies significantly among ethno- linguistic groups and locations. Over time, an archetype of a Melanesian Big Man emerged from interactions and cross-pollination of perceptions of masculinity that came through colonialism, missionisation, migration and trading encounters, and interpretations of culture from foreign observers reflected back through media and colonial and aid policies (Sahlins 1963). Men in East New Britain had their own interpretations about what it meant to be, or aspire to be, a Big Man, which became some of the factors that shaped their positioning against broader ideas of ‘good’ masculinity. To consider these more nuanced and emplaced interpretations and how they sit against a national imaginary throughout the thesis, it is useful to first describe what a Big Man is in more general terms.

Richard Eves writes that ‘at the forefront of the characteristics that make up the dominant, exemplary form of masculinity in Papua New Guinea are assertiveness and strength’ (Eves 2006, 25). He cites Paula Brown to say that the ideal man in Papua New Guinea is ‘a strong warrior and orator, a “Big Man” directing and leading a group of men in warfare and ceremony’ (in Eves 2006, 25). In all three of this study’s research sites, the historical

Big Man is remembered as not only key to fights and ritual, but also peace keeping and building, mediation and maintaining community ties and mutual respect. In its broadest definition, the Big Man is a leader, sufficiently well-resourced to be a community patron, and holding enough political and social cachet that his decisions will be acted upon and his negotiations—and conquests—successful.

Historically, a Big Man developed his power and his resources through cultivation of complex relationships of exchange (Martin 2013, Strathern 1991, Zimmer-Tamakoshi 2012). His power was not his alone, but was shared and supported by clan, tribe and family. Maintaining status was contingent on organising (and resourcing) kastam events, arbitrating in intra and inter-group conflict and encouraging or coercing others in the community to participate in building community wellbeing through practical and sociocultural acts (Epstein 1999, Martin 2013). In East New Britain, both among the Tolai and the Lote, this coercion is said to have been usually (though not always) through exchange relationships rather than physical force (Banks 1993, Epstein 1999). Drawing on the work of Marshall Sahlins and others, Keir Martin (2013, 183) concludes that:

the Big Man, as someone who makes himself Big by extending and drawing upon gift– debt relations … constantly have to prove their ability to organise the relations and transactions that make them valuable to their followers … The Big Man may occupy a particular position within the network of debts and obligations that make up village life, but like everyone else he is enmeshed within them. His authority, such as it is, is an outcome of the special position that he has made for himself within those networks, not the result of an independence from them.

The Big Man of history, living within the relatively contained social settings of village and clan, built wealth and prestige from relationships and social power through cultivating loyalty and accumulating debtors. Such loyalty was not fixed, however, and failure to fulfil obligations to the community would mean a loss of status. As Martin writes, ‘[the Big Man’s] power was not an external force that can sweep away the opposition of a community’ (2013, 191).

Various ethnographic accounts since the 1960s have described the decline of this traditional type of Big Man, whose power was accumulated through reciprocal exchange (Epstein 1969, Martin 2013, Neumann 1992). Martin’s respondents go so far as to say that, ‘all the Big Men are dead’ (2013, 208) and that claims to being a Big Man now are

only a ‘pastiche’, subject to the selective processes of social mores and behaviours being made and remade in response to historic change (2010, 2013). Nonetheless, permutations of Big Man-ness remain visible in constructions of idealised masculinity and indeed in communities’ aspirations for their men. Throughout the field research, the term Big Man was used by research respondents to describe good leaders: men of power and influence in church and village communities or clans, or elected political leaders locally and nationally. This is true even where all of the historic conditions of clan cohesion and reciprocal practices that gave traditional Big Men power were no longer in place, or, as was reported among the Lote during data collection in Pomio District, where elders had died before passing on relevant knowledge about leadership, land and spirituality. Moreover, characteristics of a Big Man—such as power from gift–debt relationships; assertiveness and bodily strength; respected moral values drawn from kastam and Christianity; and strong social cachet—were all included in discussions of what a good man is in Papua New Guinea. Breadwinning is not only about supporting a nuclear or immediate family, but having enough resources to contribute to clan and church activities, support family members and cultivate gift–debt relationships. Aggression takes the shape of assertiveness, strength and strong oratorical skills, but violence is only employed ‘where necessary’; an idea that is unpacked further in terms of its implications for gendered violence in later chapters. Heterosexuality is bounded in Christian morality that is increasingly focussed on companionate marriage rather than relationships of male dominance and coercion (Cox and Macintyre 2014). However, here too, the principle of discipline in the family and the man as responsible for family discipline are employed to legitimise violence (Banks 1993, 2000, Bradley 1990, Wardlow 2006). Heterosexuality also emphasises the importance of expanding clans to help maintain ownership of land, organised along lines of matrilineal descent in which, practically and socially, women play a key role (Banks 1993). All of this is to say that the contemporary imagining of a Big Man may be a pastiche, drawing on all of the historic and modern influences listed above but important all the same in terms of how the men I spoke to position their own masculinity and aspiration.

The other side of this, as apparent throughout the research, is a sense of entitlement to the material and social benefits of being a Big Man: in particular, power over others and respect or regard from the community; access to land; and material wealth. This idealising of security, wealth and prestige, as well as individualism and capitalist consumerism—

rather than the Big Man who earned respect through networks of reciprocity—can be seen as a direct response to experience of precarity, changing economies and changing systems of land ownership (Martin 2007, 2010, Robbins 2005) and speaks to the claims made by Martin’s interlocutors that all the Big Men were dead (Martin 2013). Martin explores the rise of a derogatory term for this kind of man in East New Britain, a Big Shot or biksot. They were generally businessmen, professionals and high-profile public servants. As mentioned, Big Men got their power from engaging in complex networks of reciprocity and exchange, allowing them to accrue stores of traditional shell money, called tabu, which allows participation in, and control over, important customary ceremonies. This is done through years of working to earn respect from fellow community members and represents continuous processes of growing and maintaining social capital. In contemporary East New Britain, biksots were able to buy shells to make tabu from the overseas sites where they are harvested, using money that they earned through business or employment. They existed in different political economies that bypassed the need to recognise obligations to others in the community as a prerequisite for wealth and status (Martin 2010).

The comportment and style of these men in many ways matched the stereotype of the ‘real men’ shown on posters about HIV and violence against women prevention, which, like so much prevention imagery, was developed in cosmopolitan settings, transposed into Papua New Guinea and then reframed for local settings, or vernacularised (Merry 2006). The men posed as positive role models in awareness campaigns are affluent and urbane; sporting heroes and elites (see Figure 3). Calling the men on the posters ‘real men’ tells audiences that these are the type of people, and are possessed of the kind of success, that every man should aspire to be or achieve.2

2 Conversely, the models used to demonstrate criminality in posters about violence against women look poor, unsmiling and dirty—the opposite of a biksot, but, framed differently, a man whose soiled clothes are the result of work to support his family in agricultural blocks and roadside businesses, a figure who is common across the country.

Figure 3: Image of HIV Awareness poster from the gutpela man tru [he’s a really good man] campaign

The awareness campaigns implied that part of the successes of these men is that they were non-violent/used condoms/lived a full, successful life, defying stigma if they were living with HIV. However, in real life, biksots were not necessarily seen as wholly upstanding citizens who consistently practised habits that HIV and anti-violence campaigns might categorise as good. As will be explored throughout the thesis, the affluence of biksots meant that they were figures of aspiration and envy. However, these men are also witnessed engaging in extramarital affairs or paying for sex; sexually assaulting women and using their social and financial power to coerce sex; over-consuming alcohol and

acting in anti-social ways as a result. In many cases, these men face few if any sanctions as a consequence. Nonetheless, one of the faces of good masculinity invoked by men during my research was the ability to show off accoutrements of twenty-first century wealth. This included buying caches of tabu,which in certain contexts or narratives is prioritised over being someone who respects and is respected by women and men in their community.

At the same time, men who thought to be ‘money minded’ and overly individualistic were roundly criticised throughout the research, even as some respondents fetishised the idea of wealth and prestige. Gentler and humbler visions of positive masculinity were offered by those asked directly about what it meant to be a good man.

One security guard, a Tolai man around 25 years old, responded to this question during one of the first discussion groups by saying:

In my family, there are five siblings, three brothers and two sisters. Out of all of us, the one that I like best is the third-born brother. He’s younger than me. Because this boy, he’s the kind of man who thinks of other people. For example, if he looks inside the house and there’s no food there, he’ll go to the garden and find food. If there’s no firewood at the house, he’s the one that gets firewood. Also, he always shows respect to the rest of the family. In return, we all have a lot of respect for him. This kind of leadership quality, he’s got it inside him.

This young man is described as good because of his thoughtfulness and helpfulness. He gains respect from doing work that was described throughout the field research as women’s work. However, in this account, he is not considered less of a man for doing so. I include this vignette here to demonstrate that versions of these three variations of being a good man—Big Man, biksot, humble helper—are held together and invoked by men in various combinations and in different settings as aspirational. Demonstrating the importance of context and relationality, they call upon modified versions of ‘good’ at different times and for different purposes and audiences by men throughout the research. In this research, I consider the effect of this milieu on interpretations of developmental discourses about improved gender equality and respectful sexual relationships promulgated through HIV prevention and anti-violence against women campaigns. I

examine how those different interpretations manifested in men’s lives as they seek to become a good man or raitman.

To help understand how this played out in the communities where I conducted the research, I now turn to a description of the research contexts and my efforts to navigate and make sense of encounters found within them.