Negotiating What It Means to be a "Good" Man in Contemporary Papua New Guinea

Abstract

In this seminar, PhD Candidate Stephanie Lusby provides an overview of her thesis research, undertaken in urban, semi-rural and rural-remote field sites in 2012-13, and presents key findings from it. Her thesis research takes the transnational campaign framing of good masculinity as a starting point and investigates the ambivalences and tensions in the ways that men and their communities frame what it means to be a raitman, a real man or good man, in contemporary East New Britain, Papua New Guinea (PNG). The research also examines how collective and individual aspirations and experiences of navigating social, political and economic precarity, shape interpretations of good masculinity, and how men position themselves against those aspirations. Show more