My research on legal pluralism in Papua New Guinea (PNG) deals with the local practice of dispute resolution in different Wampar-villages in Markham Valley. There are different fora of dispute resolution available at the local level, based on state and non-state law.
I am mainly interested in “village courts” - legal spheres constructed by the nation state - where local customs and traditional mechanisms of dispute settlement ought to be applied. This setting is a prototype of state legal pluralism and weak legal pluralism. There are about 1,000 courts of this kind in operation throughout PNG in rural as well as in urban areas. The first of these have been installed as early as 1975, during independence, and others are still mounted today. Legal planners designed these courts in order to provide law and order in the remote areas.
Most intriguing in studying village courts is the divergence between the local practice and national laws concerning them. I do not interpret local legal practice as resistance to or ignorance of national regulation but much more as unintentional practice born out of a lack of knowledge about national regulation (including human rights treaties) and state policy (especially on women’s rights prevention). At the same time, local legal actors as magistrates and other village court personnel have imaginations of “the state” that are reproduced by them in the course of dispute resolution.
My re-study this summer (July-August 2009) will focus on local knowledge about recent state policies regarding village courts. In my paper I would like to present my findings on this subject. Additionally I would like to elaborate on the usefulness of including the state and its representatives, actors and actions in the study of legal pluralism in the margins of the state.