The States of Law in Papua New Guinea

Abstract This article employs a consideration of Peter Fitzpatrick’s early work in Papua New Guinea to reflect on legal and social developments the country since his residence there during independence period. In particular, concerns about emergence Guinean bourgeois legality that would shape postcolony are shown have been prescient some respects, also had other outcomes unanticipated by Marxist anthropological imagination 1970s. Finally, I use examples from heterogeneous lawscape cities illustrate how ‘true people’s law’ envisioned Fitzpatrick is process emerging spaces outside formal legislative or court processes.