Postcolonial nationalism and neo‐Pentecostalism: A case from Papua New Guinea

Abstract

This article offers an anthropological analysis of a Papua New Guinean nationalist ideology deeply inspired by neo-Pentecostalism. The basis for this study comes from

Grassroots Law in Papua New Guinea

“…It was a perfect illustration of how many international NGOs and donor agencies struggle to engage in a coherent fashion with PNG politics, which seem half of the time to be in accordance with the particular set of liberal humanistic values that these agencies promote and the other half of the time to be pointed in a direction that they cannot countenance. The religiously motivated destruction of traditional carvings in PNG's Parliament House was another example of this phenomenon, coming as it did directly on the heels of the repeal of the Sorcery Act and a national conversation about how to eradicate sorcery-related violence by means of eradicating sorcery itself (Santos da Costa, 2021;Schram, 2014). The debates about the destruction of the carvings, too, were dealing with categorical peripheries-a problem encountered by village courts when they confront sorcery cases.…”

Compassion or Corruption? Temporalities of Care and Nationhood in Papua New Guinean Nursing Education

“…The concept of the Melanesian Way, as outlined by theorist and politician Bernard Narokobi, was influential during the Independence 1 era and remains rhetorically popular with many health professionals (Narokobi 1980). The Melanesian Way has been described as a “hopeful synthesis between diverse indigenous cultures and the positive aspects of Western culture” (Santos da Costa 2021: 902)—namely, Christianity. However, invocations of the Melanesian Way have also become associated with “corrupt practices” that cynically deploy indigenous values of “gift‐giving and wantokism ” 2 (Santos da Costa 2021: 902) in ways that undermine national development.…”

“…The Melanesian Way has been described as a “hopeful synthesis between diverse indigenous cultures and the positive aspects of Western culture” (Santos da Costa 2021: 902)—namely, Christianity. However, invocations of the Melanesian Way have also become associated with “corrupt practices” that cynically deploy indigenous values of “gift‐giving and wantokism ” 2 (Santos da Costa 2021: 902) in ways that undermine national development. Whichever view of Papua New Guinean nationhood nurses subscribe to, all place differences between educated and rural people at the heart of their concerns about service and duty.…”

“…Under settler colonialism in Indonesian West Papua, for example, medical citizenship is shaped by the fact that indigenous Papuan medical workers “see themselves as part of the same threatened population” (Munro 2020: 635) as the patients they serve. Papua New Guinean nurses, belonging to a nation that was formerly colonized but in which many are ambivalent about independence (Santos da Costa 2021), understand themselves as political subjects on a continuum of “development.” One characteristic of being an educated, developed person is a capacity for emotional detachment, necessary to resist the affective and material demands of kin. Medical citizenship in the Papua New Guinean context is always relative: A physician, a nurse, and a community health worker exist at different points on the continuum of education and professional hierarchy and social class, all of which come bundled with ideas about their capacity for detachment.…”