Paper short abstract:

A highly articulate approach to temporality is voiced by Papua New Guineans not just concerned about but responsible for modernizing the country's 'underlying law'. The individuals interested in discussing the conflicts they identify are, as much as the anthropologist, conflicted themselves.

Paper long abstract:

A highly articulate approach to temporality is voiced by Papua New Guineans not just concerned about but responsible for modernizing the country's 'underlying law'. They see incipient conflicts between the practice of contemporary law, whose external origins they acknowledge and thus keep alive, and custom, regarded as internal to indigenous 'groups', which morphs into 'customary law' when it is applied in the courts. The unfinished task of developing an underlying law, as envisaged by the makers of PNG's constitution forty years ago, was to find a customary counterpart for the position occupied by (the ex-colonial) common law.

Visions of how the future is made out of the past produce incompatibilities in multiple directions; the handful of individuals interested in discussing these overlapping conflicts are, as much as the anthropologist, conflicted themselves. Based on a seminar given to the Constitutional and Law Reform Commission in Port Moresby, this paper draws principally on the work of Andrew Moutu and Melissa Demian.