Academic Programs

This unit introduces Students to the three main theories of community development. The theories of structural functionalism, conflict, and symbolic interactionism provide a framework for understanding development at the community level. Students will conduct practical observations in a particular community to, identify the different institutions and its functions, understand the different groups and their power relations, and explain the views of different groups about events, places and people.

PNG has a representative democracy that depends on the electoral processes to help select representatives from different electorates. Different administrative institutions work together to facilitate the electoral processes in accordance with different electoral laws and policies. This unit provides an overview of the electorates and the election processes. You will study the different laws and policies, then differentiate the various administrative institutions, distinguish the electoral boundaries, analyse various electoral processes, differentiate the types of elections, and examine roles of political parties. The discussion will also include campaign strategies, election dispute cases, and change in the voting system including the gender issue and election related violence.

This unit explores a range of widely adopted texts that provide a fresh, new look at cultural diversity in PNG and the world. The fact that different peoples assign different meanings to events, objects, individual persons, and emotions is a source of considerable conflict, miscommunication, and misunderstanding. The technique of fieldwork and participant observation and criticism including the impact of persons and biographies behind anthropologists’ findings are examined to identify their unique influences.

International organizations have become significant in the international system. They are categorized into profit and non-profit organizations. In addition, some are referred to as multinational corporations and non-governmental organizations, while others as intergovernmental organizations. The unit aims to help students understand the roles and responsibilities of international organizations in PNG. As such, the international relations theory of liberalism and its sub theories provides the framework to help students understand the formation, roles, and responsibilities of international organizations.

This unit introduces basic elements of Human Resource Management (HRM) as a method of organizing the workplace. Students will critically assess the relationship between strategy and the core HRM approaches to the quality of working life. Students will locate HR strategies within organizational, business, demographic, economic, legislative and industrial contexts. At all times, it focuses on maximizing the synergies between the employees and the employer without forgetting organizational goals’ achievement.

This unit aims to prepare students to undertake a small social science research project. The theoretical component of this unit introduces the philosophies and approaches underpinning qualitative and quantitative types of research, and familiarize with elements of research project leading to the development research proposal. The practical component of the unit develops skills for defining research problem, critical reading and writing literature review, developing data collection instruments, and obtaining ethical clearance.

Foreign policy analysis is a sub-field and a theory of international relations that focuses on the process of foreign policy decision-making. This unit aims to help you develop your analytical capabilities by employing relevant theoretical tools to analyse selected cases of foreign policy decision-making. In particular, the levels of analysis provide a systematic framework for understanding the processes used and the factors affecting foreign policy decision makers.

PNG has gone through significant administrative reforms, which have altered the function and focus of the public service machinery. This unit provides an overview of administrative reforms and directs your attention to the current focus on district development. The District Development Authority manages the decentralized administrative system and controls the district services improvement funds. The funds a disbursed at the district level and used in accordance with the district and ward development plans.

This course aims to guide students to become critical viewers of film as a medium of communication for development. The viewing of films, both fiction and documentaries, allows for analysis and discussion of style, language, theme, plot, character, pictures and soundtrack, in the context of time, space and message communicated by the particular film.

The first part of the course reviews film analysis and theory, with exercises based on fiction movies or part thereof: Students will become familiar with film components, pictures and soundtrack, camera shots and movements, film editing techniques, and the necessary vocabulary for film analysis. The second part of the unit will focus on documentaries, and particularly those exploring social and development issues in PNG. The part of the course entails the viewing and reflecting upon a number of documentaries available. During the fourth module, students will work on the making of a documentary on a development issue.

At the heart of the various cultures in PNG was a religious attitude. Interpretations of traditional lifestyle as well as contemporary events were formed in language and beliefs and responded to with rituals, which in general language are identified as religious. This unit will seek to establish a working definition of religion in the traditional villages and relate this to definitions for world religions, as it appears in the Constitution and as an identification of religious experience in the villages. There will be first an attempt to relate the continuing traditional religious realities to the Christian environment that holds sway today, without neglecting the appearance of Islam or other world religions; then principle areas of village culture such as initiation, magic and spirits will be investigated. This will be related to new religious movements of the contact times. Troublesome issues such as sanguma and health treatment issues will be related to this discussion.

Foreign policy is a plan that directs the interaction of a state with other states and non-state actors in the anarchic international system. All foreign policies seek to maximize the national interest of a particular state. This unit aims to introduce the concept of foreign policy, focusing on various foreign policy approaches adopted or decisions made by PNG since independence. The various foreign policy approaches or decisions have their merits and demerits but play a pivotal part in contributing towards the development of PNG.

This unit aims to help you form a basic understanding of a community-based project in a district. You will differentiate important stages in a community-based project like initiating, planning, execution, monitoring and control including closure. You will then study how these five stages apply practically by observing an ongoing community-based project led by a District Development Authority or a non-governmental organization. The knowledge you gain from your observation will help you put together a basic community-based project proposal for a new project in your own district or in the Madang district to be funded by the District Development Authority or other donors.