Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on the nationalist project of a group of bureaucrats and politicians self-identified as the Unity Team. Based on their claims about national crisis and using anthropological theory on temporality, I delineate the configurations of their particular kind of nationalism.

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on the nationalist project of a group of bureaucrats and politicians that worked In the Papua New Guinean (PNG) Parliament and that self-identified as the Unity Team. The ethnographic material I use comes from my fieldwork in Parliament in 2015. The Unity Team was responsible for implementing the Restoration, Reformation and Modernization Program (RRMP), which was spearheaded by the Speaker of the 9th Parliament (2012-2016), Hon. Theodor Zurenuoc. The RRMP became known for initiatives such as the removal and dismantling of carvings that embellished the façade of the Parliament and for pushing a motion that established a donated 400-year-old Bible as a national treasure.Anthropologists’ concern about nationalism and nation-making in the Pacific region are not a novelty. Anthropological work, in particular, has increased throughout the decades, moving from scepticism (Babadzan 1988; Keesing 1989) to an inquiry into the different ways in which national expressions are crystallized (Hirsch 1990; Foster 1992). More recently, attention has been drawn to how and where Christianity centres amid these broader discourses and to what difference they make (Robbins 1998; Baker 2013; Handman 2015). Based on my informants’ claims about national crisis and their responsibility on the face of it and using anthropological contributions to themes such as temporality and postcolonial critique, I delineate the configurations of their particular kind of nationalism.