The Thesis Structure

Men and women, and communities as collectives, at each of the three research sites described particular dynamics and challenges that are context specific, and that shape what being a raitman meant. These often are themed around common issues that came up repeatedly throughout the research in discussions of awareness. The thesis chapters have been organised around these overarching themes. Each explores a different perspective on the ways that men assemble, negotiate and justify notions of being a good man. Further, through the chapters I examine how these assemblages both incorporate and subvert messages of gender equality, safe sex and violence prevention.

Before discussing how the content of awareness campaigns has been incorporated into gendered identities in Papua New Guinea, I first provide an overview of responses to HIV and violence against women in Papua New Guinea. In Chapter 2: ‘Doing Awareness’, I demonstrate the linkages between transnational forums and tropes used in prevention, and the challenges of attempts to make relevant global messaging in new and diverse contexts. I also introduce the agents and service providers in Kokopo, NCR and Melkoi who have been charged with delivering prevention campaign messages and who are responsible for delivering on the promises of service delivery and response that those campaigns promise. In Chapters 3–6, I demonstrate how men’s navigation of precarity, aspiration and gendered personhood play out in their social, sexual, political and intimate relationships,

through examination of different themes and the ways that ‘good man’ tropes in prevention campaigns shape these interactions. In Chapter 3: Men and Health, I consider the ways in which the characteristics of being a good man reverberate through men’s narratives about their own and other’s health priorities, and play out in health-seeking and risk-taking behaviours. I describe the different ways that people source healthcare in East New Britain, including from health centres and bush medicine practitioners, and consider the ways that health system service shortages and costs, narratives of shame and people's understandings of the causes of illness influence their health-seeking behaviour. I then focus specifically on men, considering two health issues that were consistently raised during the research as priorities for communities. The first, maternal health, allows men to position themselves as raitman by looking outward, advocating for the rights of women and whole communities to protect the health of mothers and children; although this public discourse sometimes contrasts with private behaviours towards women as partners. The second issue, use of alcohol and marijuana, speaks directly to how men view their own corporeality and physical vulnerability and their culpability for behaviours discussed widely as amplifying risk of violence against women and the spread of HIV. Here, tensions in definitions of what it means to be a raitman are realised, as the negative narratives around substance abuse are placed next to the important social role of sharing and enjoying intoxicants for many men.

Chapter 4: HIV Risk and AIDS Fear builds on discussions of risk and responsibility raised with regard to health and health-seeking behaviour and considers how this plays out in narratives about HIV. Here I ask what it means to be a good man in the shadow of sikAIDS, in communities where the known prevalence of HIV is low; however, fear and stigma around HIV and the anticipated threat of HIV and AIDS for communities, economies and bodies is, I argue, part of the affective experience of precarity. The slippages or apparent inconsistencies in what it means to be a raitman introduced in Chapter 3 are expanded upon here and their gendered contours described in more detail. Again, men are shown to participate eagerly in advocating for greater community protections as part of their positioning against ideas of aspirational masculinity. This takes place in the context of an HIV Response that is predicated on a drive to measure and quantify those living with HIV in Papua New Guinea. I argue that the push from transnational and national awareness directives to ‘know’ an epidemic that for reasons both structural and social is full of silences and hidden knowledge in Papua New Guinea

exacerbates fear and discrimination in ways that are deeply gendered. These feed into moralising narratives around sexuality and sexual behaviours that are disproportionately targeted at women, which silences much of the possible discussion about men’s vulnerability and culpability and allows them to be positioned as good men in comparison with ‘bad’ women.

Chapter 5: Good Men, Bad Women and Narratives of Violence investigates these narratives of good men and bad women in closer detail. I examine how the idea of discipline, which is central to the ideals of aspirational masculinity for men across the research sites, is used to explain and even excuse acts of violence when positioned as a response to the transgression of social mores. I show that these accounts are gendered, whether they are applied to descriptions of violence between men, violence between women, violence against women perpetrated by men, or violence or attempted violence by women against men. In each of these categories of violence, gendered power differentials, class and experiences of precarity shape how violence occurs and how bystanders respond to it. Again, even while describing behaviours that respondents acknowledge as criminal and that are counter to what they themselves advocated for publically—increased safety for women and harsher responses from state law and justice—men who admitted to perpetrating or being complicit in acts of violence against women were nonetheless able to position themselves as good (or at least, better than bad) by claiming that by disciplining ‘bad women’ they were engaged in efforts to protect their communities from risk of HIV and moral decline.

In Chapter 6: Narratives of Justice, I take up the suggestion of men, as reported in Chapter 5, that inadequate legal consequences and lack of opportunities to seek justice are a crucial contributor to high rates of violence against women in East New Britain. I start the conversations in this chapter by recognising the fact that awareness prevention around violence against women is predicated upon the reliability of state legal responses to violence and respect for the international rights-based conventions to which Papua New Guinea is a signatory. Justice according to awareness is therefore reliant on the functionality of police and courts and their ability and willingness to act in the interests of ensuring the rights of women to safety and bodily autonomy, regardless of claims of provocation or immoral behaviour. As illustrated with regard to health services in Chapter 3, I demonstrate the ways that state justice mechanisms work alongside locally based mechanisms (including the state-authorised village courts) that use knowledge of social

mores and the imperative to maintain community peace rather than national laws to arbitrate or mediate disputes. Following the work of Michael Goddard (2013) and Melissa Demian (2003), I show how the functions and philosophies of different categories of law and justice providers influence each other and are shaped by societal power dynamics, from the national to the local. Again, these dynamics are shaped by understandings of gender roles and gendered power, which can influence the ways in which women and men are treated in mediations and in legal decision-making processes.

Here too, whether or not people access local mechanisms or state authorities can be a reasoned choice based on what is considered appropriate or useful, but is often also a choice shaped by experiences of precarity—whether poor access to state services because of geographic location and cost; or feared negative consequences for the complainant as a result of pursuing punitive justice or for the community as a result of inviting police inside. Nonetheless, I am able to describe positive advancements in state responses to violence against women, including ways in which police are actively working with, and engaging, community-level law and justice committees in the project of preventing and responding to complaints of family and sexual violence. These are framed by an example of the (at times uneasy) marriage of state and local justice mechanisms, which I illustrate using an account of responses to a threat of rape that took place while I was resident at Melkoi. This vignette draws out the ways that the different sides of aspirational masculinity, including the public advocate, protector of kastam, community protector, strong father and family protector can play against each other to form definitions of justice that are as malleable as are definitions of violence—or definitions of a raitman.