Dispossession and the Environment: Rhetoric and Inequality in Papua New Guinea

“Drawing from the author’s two decades of research experience in Papua New Guinea, this engaging, lively, and lucid manuscript discusses how structural inequalities are produced, lived, and reinforced in today’s globalized world. Molly Doane, author of Stealing Shining Rivers: Agrarian Conflict, Market Logic, and Conservation in a Mexican Forest

“In this intellectually groundbreaking study of uneven development, Paige West demonstrates how non-material representations of people and place in Papua New Guinea have profound material consequences. Her masterful analysis examines accumulation by dispossession through representational strategies that allow surfers, development experts, and other expatriates to dispossess Papua New Guineans of both their culture and their environment. A unique and powerful contribution to political ecology and environmental studies. Jerry Jacka, University of Colorado, Boulder