Developmental Faith, Sacrifice and the Betrayal of Transitional Justice: A Bougainvillean Case Study

Abstract

This article, drawing on the case study of resource development and conflict in Bougainville (Papua New Guinea), explores how global faith in development hollows out the possibilities of justice for peoples transitioning from the violence of colonization, corporate-state crime and armed civil conflict. While developmental faith promises a future horizon of prosperity with the Global North, Bougainville's recent history illuminates how development's economy of sacrifice authors social fragmentation, conflict and gross environmental harms while serving the interests of powerful transnational corporation, states and local elites. The harmonization of such interests, when coupled with development's reluctance to confront substantive colonial and post-colonial injustices, risks setting the parameters for a new era of instability and state-corporate crime.