Expressions of interest: informal usury in urban Papua New Guinea

Title: Expressions of interest: informal usury in urban Papua New Guinea
Creator: Goddard, Michael
Relation: Pacific Studies Vol. 28, Issue 1-2, p. 42-67
Relation: http://w3.byuh.edu/academics/thepacificinstitute/psjournal.htm
Publisher: Brigham Young University Hawaii
Resource Type: journal article
Date: 2005
Description: This article examines the nature and practice of small scale usury in a 'grassroots' urban community in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. In this environment the moneylenders are people of limited financial resources, barely richer than their clients. The latter are often self-employed in informal occupations. Using examples from cases where usurers have taken defaulting debtors to urban 'village courts', I show how debt is negotiated by usurers and clients, and I indicate differences between local attitudes toward usury and those that are generally held in Western societies. I discuss prevalent views in social science literature about the influence of kinship sensibilities on socioeconomic behaviour in urban Papua New Guinea and attempt to situate moneylending for profit in Port Moresby in the complex local integration of the so-called gift economy and the cash economy.
Subject: small scale usury; Papua New Guinea; kinship; moneylenders; village courts
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/34492
Identifier: uon:3569
Identifier: ISSN:0275-3596
Language: eng
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