Paper short abstract:

Acts of Parliament in Papua New Guinea appear to occupy a particular place in the legal imaginary of the country, where they are discussed in some circles as if knowledge of the Act alone could change intimate interpersonal behaviours, in this case, domestic violence.

Paper long abstract:

Acts of Parliament in Papua New Guinea appear to occupy a particular place in the legal imaginary of the country, where they are discussed in some circles as if knowledge of the Act alone could change intimate interpersonal behaviours. The law is conceived in certain discussions as if all of its interim "levels" are erased, and the Act alone is needed to mediate between the state and its citizens. This is particularly notable where an Act is popularly regarded as a moral corrective to social action.

In this paper, I discuss the apparent "scale collapse" that many of my Papua New Guinean interlocutors seem to be imagining when they talk about the law as a mechanism for behavioural change or even a kind of social engineering. Problems that one might imagine to be social, economic, or political in nature, are very frequently attributed to the legal domain in PNG - but the legal at a national level. For example, the Lukautim Pikinini (Child) Act 2009 and Family Protection Act 2013 are a pair of Acts that are frequently cited in policy circles and in community level "awarenesses" as items of legislation whose existence alone should be sufficient for people to change violent or abusive beahviour at the level of people's family relationships. No other statutes or decisions in the country's Supreme Court, are deemed necessary - or even of particular interest. "The Act is there," someone might say, "people just need to be more aware of it."