Paying a School Fee is a Father's Duty: Critical Citizenship in Central New Ireland

Abstract

The analysis of citizenship often neglects descriptions of what people think about participating in routine civic duties, instead making valuable criticisms of the processes that exclude or restrict them from political involvement. Here, I describe how residents of central New Ireland reason about their debts as citizens in relation to the mundane work of arranging secondary school fees. The singular act of paying the school fee evokes multiple contexts: of the modern state, codified matrilineal traditions, and eclipsed cultural practices— thereby establishing the terms by which residents of New Ireland assess their experiences of inequality. I analyze their own explanations for the multiple relationships that obligate a father to pay school fees. These explanations suggest that civic obligations can be discharged as acts of critical citizenship with the potential to alter political relations in the near future, [postcolonial ity, citizenship, modernity, tradition, exchange, matrilineality, Papua New Guinea]

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