Looking Like a Culture

ISSN： 1469-2902

Source： Anthropological Forum, Vol.17, Iss.3, 2007-11, pp. : 225-238

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Abstract

Across contemporary Papua New Guinea (PNG), concerns about culture, about possessing and appearing as a culture, are highly salient and contested. This is in part an outgrowth of commercial and state agencies promoting their products and policies through distinct images of PNG's myriad cultures. These agencies seek to incite forms of possession, as individual consumers and as national citizens. In a different but allied manner, concerns with appearing as a culture are part of long-standing Melanesian coercive relations, where people seek to be recognised in publicly valued ways. The paper addresses the interactions between these modes of appearance across a range of examples from PNG ethnography to elucidate how contemporary PNG peoples make themselves up into different kinds of cultural 'things' that are displayed, mutually recognised and evaluated.