Circulations: Modernist Imaginaries of Colonialism and Decolonization in Papua New GuineaA free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. In Circulations, Courtney Handman examines the surprising continuities in the ways that modernist communications discourses shaped both colonial and decolonial projects in Papua New Guinea. Often described as a place with too many mountains and too many languages to be modern, Papua New Guinea was seen as a space of circulatory primitivity—where people, things, and talk could not move. Colonial missionaries and administrators, and even anticolonial delegations of the United Nations Trusteeship Council, argued that this circulatory primitivity could be overcome only through the management of communication infrastructures, bureaucratic information flows, and the introduction of English. Innovatively bringing together analyses of radios, airplanes, telepathy, bureaucracy, and lingua francas, Circulations argues for the critical role of communicative networks and communicative imaginaries in political processes of colonialism and decolonization worldwide. |
Contents
| 1 | |
Tok Pisin and the Linguistic Infrastructure of the Lutheran Missions | 59 |
Tok Pisin Communist Radio and Other Channels | 84 |
The Trusteeship | 109 |
English and the Channels of Decolonization | 127 |
Global Bureaucracy and the Art of Not Making | 144 |
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Common terms and phrases
administering authorities airplanes Anthropology anticolonial areas argued Australian administration aviation broadcast bureaucratic Canberra channels chapter Christian Radio Christian Radio Missionary Church of Papua circulation circulatory primitivity colonial administration communication concern connected context create creole CRMF cultural decolonization demands Department of Territories discussed English Evangelical Lutheran Church External Affairs Finschhafen Flierl fragmentation German New Guinea global Handman highlands independence indigenous information flows infrastructural interactions Islands Monthly vol Jabem John Kuder Kāte labor lingua francas linguistic long yu Lutheran Mission Lutheran missionaries Madang movement native non-administering authorities organized Pacific Islands Monthly Papua New Guinea Pidgin plane political Port Moresby postwar problem question Rabaul Radio Missionary Fellowship radio network remote seemed self-government sense Session social speakers Special Questionnaire stations story talk target dates telepathy tion Tok Pisin Trust Territory Trusteeship Council UN Trusteeship Council United Nations University Press visiting mission report