“We don’t mix with those married women”: Widowhood as an emergent gender for development projects in urban Papua New Guinea

(ENGLISH)Life histories of research participants on applied development projects can bring into view unanticipated social forms. This is particularly true for the way such projects frame gender. We document development-focused research in two cities in Papua New Guinea (PNG) that elicited accounts of widowhood, wherein participants called our attention to the implications of this kinship category for the urban context of our work. Widowhood in PNG refers not only to a woman whose husband has died but also to a woman whose husband has absconded from the marriage without a formal divorce. In the absence of support from their families, our interlocutors describe how widowhood required them to explore new ways of connecting with each other for mutual support. Their stories underscore the necessity of attention to emergent gendered subjectivities in development contexts, and to the changing nature of marriage and social reproduction in contemporary PNG.