Hard Work

<p>For the Mengen people of Papua New Guinea 'hard work' does not refer to drudgery or physically exhausting labour. Instead it involves creating and recreating social relations through acts of care marriages ceremonial events sharing and working the land together. 'Work' as the Mengen see it produces value understood as meaningful social relations. This differs significantly from the way colonial officials loggers and planters perceived value.</p><p><em>Hard Work</em> examines human-environmental relations value production natural resource extraction and state formation within the context of the Mengen. It delves into how the Mengen engage with their land and outside actors like companies NGOs and the state through agriculture logging plantation labour and environmental conservation. These practices have shaped the Mengen's lived environment while also sparking debates on what is considered valuable and how value is created.</p><p>Tammisto's monograph explores the complexities of natural resource extraction looking at both large-scale processes and personal human-environment interactions. It combines a political ecology focus on the connection between environmental issues and power relations with a focus on how value is produced represented and materialized.</p><p></p><p><strong>Tuomas Tammisto</strong> is a socio-cultural anthropologist specializing in political ecology. He currently works as an academy research fellow in Social Anthropology at Tampere University.</p>