Madang

For many years, Madang has been characterized as a “sleepy” and beautiful little town on the north coast of Papua New Guinea. With recent major developments in the Gende people’s homeland in southern Madang Province at both Kurumbukare (Ramu Nickel) and Yandera (Marengo), all that is changing very rapidly. Madang’s population is exploding and property values skyrocketing as mining company and construction personnel, NGOs, lawyers, migrants seeking work and land compensation, scholars, and many others pour in. Mining development threatens Madang’s coastal and river environments as well as the livelihoods of local communities. And angry demonstrations against the Chinese developers of the Ramu Nickel mine and the pipeline to the Basamuk area have turned ugly. “Public opinion” about these matters is largely the provenance of local bloggers and foreign NGOs, with news articles frequently based on few cases and interviews with non-representative “landowner” groups hoping to stem the hated development and the undoubted environmental destruction it poses. While such popular means of highlighting environmental issues and alleged governmental corruption and support of mining projects have their place, there should also be a focus on quantitative data and grounded analyses of the chain of events and its impacts that go far beyond Madang Province. Having worked with the Gende for nearly 30 years as well as done intensive research on both the Ramu Nickel and Yandera mining developments – most recently in 1995, 2000, 2007, 2008 and 2009 – I am interested in both sharing some of what I have learned and in providing a forum for others who have worked in Madang Province during the past ten or so years. I am hoping that geographers and other serious scholars in addition to anthropologists will be interested in participating. And, at least at this point, it is not necessary for participants to have focused on mining and its impacts in their past research. It is more important to begin to identify researchers and research being done in Madang Province and to explore fruitful lines of inquiry and collaboration in terms of both future research projects and publications. Those interested in participating and/or attending an informal session on Madang at the 2011 ASAO meeting in Hawai’i are asked to contact the organizer as soon as possible.

Laura Zimmer-Tamakoshi, 338 W. Union Street, West Chester, Pennsylvania 19382, USA; <lauratamakoshi@yahoo.com>