Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the local concept of pasin in Goroka alongside Honneth's notion of recognition in order to argue that maintaining sociality is critical in Goroka in spite of and resulting from the increasing focus on cash and commodities in people's social, material and emotional lives.

Paper long abstract:

In and around the Goroka marketplace, Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, men and women demonstrate recognition of other's well-being in daily interactions. These are expressed through the sharing of food, money, embodied gestures of mutuality and words of concern or compassion - referred to as soim pasin in Tok Pisin. The notion of pasin has both elements of Bourdieu's habitus, the social values that structure individual behaviours and motivations, serves as a descriptor of individual personality but in terms of everyday practices of generosity also demonstrates the importance of mutual recognition, as Axel Honneth argues is key to human well-being. To show pasin involves a set of moral and ethical behaviours by which people, especially women, are judged by and are valued. My research focuses on the position of market women and their place in various aspects of the local economy. By exploring the importance of pasin to their lives, I argue that women must distribute and circulate material items, and immaterial gestures and affects in order to maintain a reputation of having good 'pasin'. To have nogut pasin, or to demonstrate waitman's pasin, is to be selfish, to think only of oneself, and to cut off future possibilities of help or mutuality, especially those which are costly within the commodity economy. It is these everyday exchanges which make up a major aspect of sociality, as relationships are continuously reinforced and made through small everyday acts of mutual recognition, a key aspect of local social values.