Emerging Class in Papua New Guinea: The Telling of Difference (review)

For the past twenty-five years Deborah Gewertz—often joined by Fred Errington—has tackled one timely topic after another. Cosmologies, personhood, regional relationships, historical anthropology, feminist anthropology, representations, commercialism, modernization, and global processes have all come under their scrutiny, as they have consistently used local ethnographic data to place topics on the academic agenda. Gewertz and Errington have never had the last word in these anthropological discourses, but their work has often set the terms of the ensuing discussion and debate. This slim volume continues this trend, turning anthropological attention to the tricky problem of "class" in Papua New Guinea (PNG), whose traditional village-based communities typically shared an "egalitarian ethos."

Here Gewertz and Errington argue that a middle class has been emerging while most of the rest of us were focused intently on village-level problems. It is refreshing to see ethnographic data that actually confront an issue in PNG that nearly all of us who work there know has occurred, but which almost no anthropologist has taken seriously. For that reason alone, this book would be most welcome, but it has many other contributions to make as well.

Aside from an introductory essay and a brief conclusion, this book consists of six substantive chapters, five of them deal with issues involving the growing middle class of Wewak, the provincial headquarters of the East Sepik Province, where the authors conducted research for several months in 1996. Gewertz, in particular, was not a stranger to this town. She has visited Wewak frequently over the years and periodically she has stayed there with Chambri friends during her fieldwork. The difference between this research and her numerous earlier visits is that this time Gewertz and Errington lived in one of the fashionable neighborhoods of Wewak rather than in the squatter settlement known locally as Chambri Camp. The authors contrast the middle-class lives, aspirations, values, and consumption patterns of their neighbors with those of their long term "grass-roots" Chambri friends and former research assistants to make several of their points. They draw on a quarter-century of personal knowledge and relationships to configure the goals and aspirations of the "grass-roots."

Some readers may not like Gewertz and Errington's way of presenting data, which juxtaposes quite disparate cultural scenes into a pastiche of images to make its point. But having spent many weeks in Wewak over the past decade, I can guarantee that few who have passed through this or most other provincial centers will feel Gewertz and Errington's characterizations of place and people are far off the mark. From first page to last this monograph has the ring of authenticity; it catches exactly the tone and feel of the modern Melanesians one meets in provincial centers across the country.

The five Wewak chapters deal with four middle-class settings: Wewak's Rotary Club, a local women's trade organization, the local golf and country club, and several law and order meetings and rallies. The authors use these chapters to outline how middle-class values are shaped by global processes and how the local middle class bounds itself from the "grass-roots" through its consumption. Most importantly, these chapters make the case that middleclass values aimed at self-interested investment rather than investment in social relations are a radical shift from traditional village-based values.

Parts of two chapters, which to my mind are the most compelling and carefully crafted, deal with the costs and consequences of middle-class values and practices on non-middle class people, variously referred to as the "grass-roots" and the "poor." The authors are at their best in Chapters 3 and 4 when articulating just where and how traditional expectations confront middle-class expectations. These describe how non-middle class people come to realize they have been excluded from the middle-class lives to which they aspire. They also show in a tour de force how goods—"the objects of...