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In Circulations, Courtney Handman examines the surprising continuities in the ways that modernist communications discourses shaped both colonial and decolonial projects in Papua New Guinea. Often described as a place with too many mountains and too many languages to be modern, Papua New Guinea was seen as a space of circulatory primitivity—where people, things, and talk could not move. Colonial missionaries and administrators, and even anticolonial delegations of the United Nations Trusteeship Council, argued that this circulatory primitivity could be overcome only through the management of communication infrastructures, bureaucratic information flows, and the introduction of English. Innovatively bringing together analyses of radios, airplanes, telepathy, bureaucracy, and lingua francas, Circulations argues for the critical role of communicative networks and communicative imaginaries in political processes of colonialism and decolonization worldwide.
In Circulations, Courtney Handman examines the surprising continuities in the ways that modernist communications discourses shaped both colonial and decolonial projects in Papua New Guinea. Often described as a place with too many mountains and too many languages to be modern, Papua New Guinea was seen as a space of circulatory primitivity—where people, things, and talk could not move. Colonial missionaries and administrators, and even anticolonial delegations of the United Nations Trusteeship Council, argued that this circulatory primitivity could be overcome only through the management of communication infrastructures, bureaucratic information flows, and the introduction of English. Innovatively bringing together analyses of radios, airplanes, telepathy, bureaucracy, and lingua francas, Circulations argues for the critical role of communicative networks and communicative imaginaries in political processes of colonialism and decolonization worldwide.
Price: $34.95
Pages: 232
Publisher: University of California Press
Imprint: University of California Press
Publication Date:
29 April 2025
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9780520416000
Format: Paperback
Courtney Handman is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin and author of Critical Christianity: Translation and Denominational Conflict in Papua New Guinea.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part One. Infrastructures of Colonial Distance
1. Remote Networks: Airplanes, Radios, and the Making of Communicative Distance in Lutheran New Guinea
2. Tok Pisin and the Linguistic Infrastructure of the Lutheran Missions
3. Telepathy Tales: Tok Pisin, Communist Radio, and Other Channels of Illegitimate Circulation
Part Two. Bureaucracies of Decolonial Connection
4. Demanding Independence on Behalf of Others: The Trusteeship Council and the Trust Territory of New Guinea
5. English and the Channels of Decolonization
6. Defying Predictions: Global Bureaucracy and the Art of Not Making Guesses about the Future of New Guinea
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part One. Infrastructures of Colonial Distance
1. Remote Networks: Airplanes, Radios, and the Making of Communicative Distance in Lutheran New Guinea
2. Tok Pisin and the Linguistic Infrastructure of the Lutheran Missions
3. Telepathy Tales: Tok Pisin, Communist Radio, and Other Channels of Illegitimate Circulation
Part Two. Bureaucracies of Decolonial Connection
4. Demanding Independence on Behalf of Others: The Trusteeship Council and the Trust Territory of New Guinea
5. English and the Channels of Decolonization
6. Defying Predictions: Global Bureaucracy and the Art of Not Making Guesses about the Future of New Guinea
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index