Abstract
This paper aims to elucidate how an ordinary Papua New Guinean becomes litigant of the modern lawsuit, namely a legal subject, based on the research materials that I collected in Manus Province. In considering the construction of the legal subject, I will focus on 2 points. First is the social process that laypeople learn and adapt to an unfamiliar legal system. This paper will understand it in terms of “situated learning,” as proposed by Lave and Wenger (1991). Second are the agents who support the learning and various procedures which are needed for the lawsuits. I will call them “support agents.” Through examining the support agents, this paper will illustrate the view that a legal subject is generated as a product of power in Foucaultian terms.
My analysis focuses on the interaction between laypeople and “support agents,”especially the welfare officer. The welfare office is an institutional intermediary between the legal and customary spheres in terms of enabling laypeople to learn an unfamiliar legal
system and preparing legal documents (e.g. a complaint and an affidavit). In this sense, this paper will also be a clinical case study of the welfare office.
Learning the law is situated in the gradual process of participating in the legal system. This practical process may be simultaneously equivalent to the ontological process in which a new mode of existence emerges. Finally, I will point out the connotations of my argument,
referring to the relation of modernity and personhood.
