comparative sociology

So png – like any other place – has it’s problems. There are many things it has going for it, however. These two are phrased negatively, but – given the poverty and lack of useful employment here – are very important:

- hardcore drugs are so minimal as to be non-significant. I have never, ever heard of any up in the EHP; I’m sure they appear (in minimal quantities) PoM, Lae, maybe somewhere coastal or along the border – but they don’t make it here. There is tons of dope, but nothing stronger. Dealers aren’t big men.
- guns are old. Yeah, I know: they still kill. But people aren’t wearing night goggles and hiding from tracer ammo.

I watched “City of God” last night, and the doco on Rio de Janeiro’s pavelas (slums/settlements/ghettos). It’s actually a relief to think of PNG in comparison; individually people here are so good (and comparatively society is positively innocent); the problems related to drugs are not entrenched, crime is not the only option, not necessarily trans-generational, not so inevitable. Nor so organised. Guns are an issue, but it must be said, a background issue – a political issue (RdeJ’s police storehouse of confiscated guns! Unbelievable. And what was it the chief of police said? “We have modern armament that even Libya doesn’t have.” This is serious. “People are used to it. They conform to it.”).

But it also reinforced what I’ve been thinking about for a while: forget cultural differences. The big obstacle that is ever-increasing is poverty, linked with class. In so many areas in the world, “gaps” between classes are widening. That is where crime – drugs – guns step in.

[Oh my god! We’re having an earthquake! Must save houseowner’s ming vases - ]