When Australia was the Big Name for Papua New Guinea

The Colonial Constitution of Faiwolmin Subjects

Bibliographic Data

ID4868656
AuthorsNicole Polier
Year1995
Volume8
Issue3
Pages257-277
Publication date1995-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Historical Sociology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0952-1909 • E-ISSN: 1467-6443
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1467-6443.1995.tb00089.x
OpenAlexW2079712725
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited3

This essay addresses the constitution of colonial state subjects among Faiwolmin people of the Western Province, Papua New Guinea. As Australian power was consolidated here beginning in the 1950s, a relatively liberal, paternalistic colonialism encountered problems of containment and control on a historical and geographical penumbra of Empire. The process of bringing highly mobile and scattered shifting cultivators within the borders of the Territory was plagued by a shortage of "patrol" officers and technologies of indirect rule. This analysis is concerned with the consolidation of Australian colonial power and with how Faiwolmin became subjects, and their "customs" increasingly objects, of rule. By the time of nation state formation in 1975, it is argued, the subjectivities of Faiwolmin themselves had been reconstituted within a new terrain of conflict introduced by the imperial power

Colonialism · Consolidation (business · Constitution · Economics · Empire · Ethnology · Geography · Indirect rule · New guinea · Paternalism · Political economy · Political science · Power (physics · Sociology · State (computer science · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Australian History and Society · Island Studies and Pacific Affairs · History · Law

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