| Abstract: | In Papua New Guinea, local communities increasingly strive to render themselves ‘visible’ to the state as entities entitled to control and claim benefits from developments on their land. When people commit expressions of social form to paper they inevitably reshape previously operative social and political forms. This article compares ways in which two groups of Papua New Guineans have gone about the process of forming Incorporated Land Groups. Different histories of resource extraction, associated differences in engagement with state and companies and different pre-existing social forms are all reflected in the negotiations described. We discuss people's motivations for drawing up lists of members, the ways they went about this and implications for the communities themselves and for ILG registration more generally. Our analysis draws attention to how outcomes are shaped by scales of differentiation and emergent inequalities within the legal entities being imagined. |
