Sustainable Communities, Sustainable Development: Other Paths for Papua New Guinea

Paul James, Yaso Nadarajah, Karen Haive and Victoria Stead, Sustainable Communities, Sustainable Development. Other Paths for Papua New Guinea. (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2012).

Papua New Guinea is going through a crisis: A concentration on conventional approaches to development, including an unsustainable reliance on mining, forestry, and foreign aid, has contributed to the country’s slow decline since independence in 1975. Sustainable Communities, Sustainable Development attempts to address problems and gaps in the literature on development and create a new qualitative conception of community sustainability informed by substantial and innovative research in Papua New Guinea. The authors address questions such as: What are the stories and histories through which people respond to their nation’s development? What is the everyday social environment of groups living in highly diverse areas (migrant settlements, urban villages, remote communities)? They seek to contribute to a creative and dynamic grass-roots response to the demands of everyday life and local-global pressures.

Paul James is a professor at the Institute for Culture and Society, University of Western Sydney.

Yasothara Nadarajah is a Senior Research Fellow of the Centre for Global Research and a Senior Lecturer in International Development at RMIT’s School of Global, Urban and Social Studies.

Karen Haive is former first assistant secretary in the Department of Community Development, Papua New Guinea.

Victoria Stead is Alfred Deakin Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Deakin University.