Law and State in Papua New Guinea
- New York Academic Press 1980
- 290p;: ill.-
The book appears straightforward enough in structure. It presents, firstly, a Marxist perspective on law and state in the third world, which is then applied and refined in a historical class analysis of the Papua New Guinea case. Matters did not proceed in such a straightforward way, however. The book emerged initially as a reaction against several things - against much academic work in the third world, against theorizing about so-called law and development in particular, against the colonial experience in Papua New Guinea and against the post-colonial. I will outline these reactions and indicate how they led to the perspective offered here. The exercise will be neither rigorous nor lengthy.