The sleights of hand in the construction of desire

We have been documenting a locally acknowledged shift in the nature of inequality in Papua New Guinea whereby differences in life's circumstances and prospects were increasingly shifting from degree to kind, from commensurate to incommensurate. In the last chapter we saw members of the middle class defining themselves as “chiefs” relative to their grass-roots kin and, thereby, as ontological superiors. In their turn, members of the grass roots, recognizing structural exclusion, were becoming angry. They were afraid that they or their children (as, for instance, children who wanted Western-style education but had failed their exams or could not afford the costs) were no longer in the game, no longer even potential contenders. Indeed, they often spoke of their “jealousy” and their desire to “bring down” to their level those who, in an increasingly unfair system, had been able to acquire significantly more than they (Gewertz and Errington, 1991a).

At the same time, many of these same grass-roots Papua New Guineans, righteously angry about developing class differences, would also acknowledge – sometimes ruefully, sometimes resentfully – that they and their occasional meager accumulations were also frequently the subject of jealousy and subsequent leveling demands. Even those who resided in rural villages or in urban squatter settlements often remarked how difficult it was to fulfill kin (and linked ritual) obligations in an increasingly cash-based world – how hard it was to save money for such virtual necessities as clothing and school fees, to say nothing of saving for such “goods” as radio cassette-players.