The utopian promise of government

Abstract

Today academic debate and public discourse about the Pacific often focuses on the collapse of government – on failed nation‐states. Yet ever since Self‐Government and Independence, Melanesians have experimented with developing their own alternative forms of local government, which have often embraced but also side‐tracked official governmental schemes, structures, and practices. Using the Pomio Kivung movement in East New Britain, this article explores how government, together with its projects and promises of sovereignty, civilization, and development, is displaced and re‐mediated through the world of the dead. The customary shamanic worlds of dreams and possession are redeployed and merged with the pastoral practices and disciplinary schemes of civilizing projects originally belonging to Western churches and governments.

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