Number‐One Enemy: Police,Violence and the Location of Adversaries in a Papua New Guinean Prison.

ABSTRACT In this essay, I aim to explore how prisoners at Bomana in PNG, in the period I was there between 1994–1995, figured the violence of police. This includes an examination of what they understand to be state power and what they take to be their response to it, including the possibility of critique. Do inmates at Bomana recognize a scale shift between state and citizen, between law and violence? If so, when? How do they relate the actions of the Constabulary to their own violent behaviour and to the forceful or violent behaviour of others? These questions will be approached through the notion of enmity. In particular, by a discussion of what inmates mean when they label the police their ‘number‐one enemy’.     

Family Man: The Papua New Guinean Children of D. Carleton Gajdusek.

ABSTRACT The name Carleton Gajdusek is familiar to many scholars and those otherwise interested in Pacific anthropology and history. Yet while much has been written about Gajdusek's work on kuru and his achievements in science, little is known about his unusual family life. Addressing this gap, this article examines Gajdusek's adoption of sixteen Papua New Guinean children from among the Fore and Anga peoples. These children form part of Gajdusek's large family adopted from the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea (PNG) and Micronesia. Drawing on Gajdusek's extensive personal journals and interviews with his friends, colleagues and children, the paper refutes arguments which explain the adoptions through reference to Gajdusek's sexuality or humanitarianism, demonstrating rather that Gajdusek adopted the PNG children primarily because he wanted to create a family. Highlighting some of the ways in which Melanesian models of kinship suited Gajdusek's preference for an extended family, the article addresses an under‐researched aspect of the life of this important twentieth century figure.     

A Father's Perspective on Bridewealth in the Making of the Transnational Papua New Guinean Household

That people value ‘people’ over ‘things’ is argued often by anthropologists, but how people value specific forms and qualities of relations as they do in the example of bridewealth is less so. I explore the perspective of Papua New Guinean-born fathers in Australia as they advocate innovations in bridewealth traditions and thereby enable daughters to marry for love, cultivate a companionate marriage, and create a Papua New Guinean household. Past generations gauged the worth of traditional bridewealth by the quantity and distribution of items given and the number of exogamous clan connections forged as an index of past and future relations between clans. The current generation judges the value of even alternate forms of bridewealth for making new possibilities for those who share in it. If bridewealth enables the transnational household to emerge as the unit of decision making that replaces the clan, then innovations in bridewealth support, rather than undermine, a new normativity of companionate marriage that empowers that much wider net of kin. Drawing on a theory of value as the importance of social action towards the goal of the new normativity of the transnational household, I show how choosing a spouse is cultivated by women's fathers who refuse bridewealth, as often as it is by their husbands who provide new forms of wealth at marriage.     

Fenced In: Intimacy and Mobility in Highlands Papua New Guinea

This paper is organised around the analysis of an ‘event’; a truck trip from Kwima, a Maring speaking settlement in the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea, to Banz in the Wahgi Valley and an evening spent on the road. The event forms a standpoint from which to assess the impact of the decline of civic space, and faltering legacy of colonial governmentality, in the Jimi since 1980. I describe the emergence of new forms of mobility based around the nexus between local forms of business and trucks. In particular I focus on new and anxious forms of masculine inside relationships, understood as a transformation of a habitus of intimacy, round which such mobility is built. I argue that this transformation should be understood in terms of the dialectical relationship between business as an expansive profit oriented project on the one hand, and its anchoring in clan defined space on the other. At the same time the event provides a vantage point to reflect on the nature of long‐term fieldwork, the methodological significance of the subjectivity of the ethnographer, and the nature of ethnographic error.     

Roads to Inequality: Infrastructure and Historically Grown Regional Differences in the Markham Valley,Papua New Guinea

Roads are one of the most salient symbols of development and modernity for rural citizens of Papua New Guinea (PNG). Multinational corporations, members of parliament, and villagers frequently point to roads as a key to development. However, while roads routinely improve the incomes of those connected, many of their effects are far less scrutable. Here, we examine the economic and social consequences of two roads, the Wau‐Bulolo Highway and Highlands Highway, for two villages in PNG's Morobe Province, and consider the processes that make their outcomes so different. Tracing the history of the two highways and considering a contrasting pair of case‐studies, we explore how roads simultaneously bolster income and drive interregional economic divergence. We demonstrate how the spatial and historical contexts the Highways run through, coupled with the relationships of patronage and dependence they rely on, produce contingent social outcomes and shape local ambivalence towards the outcomes of roads.     

Josephine's Journey: Gender‐based Violence and Marian Devotion in Urban Papua New Guinea

ABSTRACT This article deals with how, in the urban setting of Madang, Papua New Guinea, Marian devotion is deployed in response to domestic and gender‐based violence. While providing insight into the lived religious experiences of Catholic women living in Madang, this article shows how Mary empowers her followers to resist violence, yet, at the same time, paradoxically, is instrumental in sanctioning women to tolerate violence. Josephine's ‘journey of violence’ reveals not only Josephine's turning to Mary, but more so, her negotiations with values belonging to different cultural logics. Caught between ‘tradition’, Christianity and ‘modernity’, Josephine and other Catholic women engage in painful processes of self‐analysis and self‐transformation to adapt to and change their situation. In these processes, Mary is used as a role model.     

The Magic of Money and the Magic of the State: Fast Money Schemes in Papua New Guinea

As Keith Hart (1986) articulated in his neat phrase ‘two sides of the coin’, money and the state are inextricably intertwined. However, academic discussions of the state tend to fall under the heading of ‘governance’, with implicit reference to democratic ideals, while money is regarded as ‘economics’, a field dominated by ideas of the market. In this paper, I use material from U‐Vistract, a mass Ponzi scam to show how quasi‐magical ideas of money and wealth have grown out of the disillusioning experience of the state in its failure to deliver ‘development’. These imaginings of prosperity entail a different kind of state, based on the moral reform of Christian citizens and political leaders and the reorientation of the banking system to deliver benefits to ordinary people. As the Royal Kingdom of Papala, U‐Vistract sought to be seen to be like a Christian state and so deceived its investors into thinking that they were participating in a moral project that would allow them to redress the short‐comings of the Papua New Guinean state. As the scam took on the appearance of the state, so the state came to be seen as a scam.     

Jumping Fish: Engendering Contestation and Development on the Waterways of the Aramia River in Papua New Guinea

ABSTRACT Set in the Aramia River basin, this article explores the intimate and interactive relationship between communities in Western Province, Papua New Guinea, and the water that dominates the environment in which they live. Located amongst tidal rivers, creeks and lagoons, Gogodala villages sit high on ‘islands’ of land. In this environment, water is the site of seasonal change and the space of movement. The Aramia River is synonymous with an ancestral figure called Sawiya who travelled in her canoe, naming, creating and populating the water and land of the area. As the ‘mother of all fish’, Sawiya controls the movement and abundance of fish and other aquatic resources. Water is embodied in Sawiya, whose capacities to both nourish and punish are the basis of seasonal variations in fish, and in the colour and clarity of water in the local lagoons and rivers. Set against the backdrop of the Ok Tedi Mine and recent logging operations on the Aramia, the article explores some of the ways in which water and its resources are defined and experienced in this rural community and the impact this may have on the exploitation and development of natural resources in PNG.     

The Rimbunan Hijau Group in the Forests of Papua New Guinea

ABSTRACT

Adding to the existing literature on the history of forestry policy and reform in Papua New Guinea (PNG), this paper focuses on the Malaysian Rimbunan Hijau Group (RH) – the largest actor in PNG's forest industry. Rimbunan Hijau's dominant presence since the 1980s has been accompanied by allegations of illegality, corruption and human rights abuses. This paper outlines RH's initial involvement in PNG's forestry sector and discusses some of the more controversial aspects of its engagement with concession acquisition processes and public policy, as well as its responses.     

Brideprice and Prejudice: An Audio-Visual Ethnography on Marriage and Modernity in Mt Hagen,Papua New Guinea

The relationship between bridewealth and women's autonomy is not only discussed amongst anthropologists, development practitioners and other scholars but also amongst brides themselves. Women continue to embrace such marital exchanges, despite their knowledge of ‘modern’ development discourse about the constraints of the practice on women's status and its links to gender-based violence. This paper provides a visual exploration of contemporary brideprice practices and women's autonomy in Mt Hagen. We draw on scenes from our ethnographic film (An Extraordinary Wedding: Marriage and Modernity in Highlands PNG) to explore deliberations and developments that occurred in the case of a particular marriage that took place in 2012. We argue that the institution of brideprice has the potential to enhance the visibility of some women and the importance of their contribution to their own and husbands' kin groups. Despite current tensions regarding brideprice, it can serve as an avenue for the enhancement of women's political participation. The particular brideprice exchange featured in our film, raised concerns for the participants, which we consider in terms of three questions: Does brideprice commodify women? Does it play a role in gender-based violence? Is it inimical to aspirations for modernist individuality? We discuss the importance of bekim (‘return gift’) and suggest that this practice challenges the notion of brideprice as a commodity transaction. We argue that, while there may be an association between brideprice and gender-based violence, brideprice, in and of itself, is not causative of violence. The marriage represented in the film, and discussed in this paper, reveals the creativity of participants in adjusting the values inherent in the customary practice of brideprice to their contemporary aspirations.     

Great Ancestral Women: Sexuality,Gendered Mobility,and HIV among the Bamu and Gogodala of Papua New Guinea

Faced with a potentially devastating epidemic of HIV/AIDS in Papua New Guinea (PNG), sexuality and mobility have become a focus of national research and prevention programs. In Gogodala and Bamu communities in the Western Province, gendered mobility and sexuality intersect with ancestral narratives that form part of a wider series of Hero Tales found in the southern regions of PNG and Irian Jaya. In this paper we highlight the way these stories detail the travels and activities of female ancestors – known as Sagalu among the Bamui and Sawiya among the Gogodala. We outline the way such ancestral figures are now linked to understandings of contemporary STIs such HIV/AIDS as well as gendered mobility and sexuality more generally. Among the Bamu such links are sometimes directly asserted, with Sagalu represented as the origin if not cause of a uniquely defined variant of HIV/AIDS. Among the Gogodala, however, HIV/AIDS is predominantly understood as something external to the Gogodala and unrelated to ancestors like Sawiya. To explain this difference we note that, historically, Gogodala women have been less mobile and less transactable than their Bamu counterparts who have continued to enact unique understandings of the intersection of heterosexual marriage, gendered mobility, and illness. We argue that the mobility and sexuality of gendered ancestors is salient to understanding these contemporary enactments and their potential implications in light of the HIV epidemic in PNG.     

Warrior Women,the Holy Spirit and HIV/AIDS in Rural Papua New Guinea

ABSTRACT This article analyses a group of Gogodala Christian women in the Western Province of Papua New Guinea who are referred to as ‘Warrior women’ and who pray, sing and call upon the Holy Spirit to cleanse their own bodies and ‘turn their eyes’, so that they are able to see those who threaten the health and well‐being of the wider community. These women have focused primarily on bringing male practitioners of magic — iwai dala — shadowy and powerful men who operate covertly and away from the gaze of others, out into the open. Whilst this has been happening for many years, the spread of HIV and AIDS into the area, fuelled by what many in the area believe is the rise of unrestrained female and male sexuality and the waning of Christian practice and principles, has meant that those perceived to bring harm to the community through their sexual behaviour have become recent targets for Warrior women. HIV/AIDS, referred to in Gogodala as melesene bininapa gite tila gi — the ‘sickness without medicine’ — is understood as a hidden sickness, one that makes its way through the community without trace until people become visibly ill. Warrior women seek to make both AIDS and those who, through their behaviour, encourage or enable its spread more visible. In the process, however, a small number of them are overcome by the Holy Spirit, so much so that they become daeledaelenapa — mad ‐ their behaviour increasingly characterised by childishness and uncontrolled sexuality.     

‘Turning Sex into a Game’: Gogodala Men's Response to the AIDS Epidemic and Condom Promotion in Rural Papua New Guinea

ABSTRACT Rugby league is the national sport of Papua New Guinea and the game's huge popularity and international profile has been used in recent condom promotion campaigns in the nation's fight against the HIV/AIDS epidemic. In this paper, I argue that the promotion of condom use through rugby league requires a national campaign strategy that includes understandings of condom use and masculinity at the rural level. I demonstrate this through a study of Gogodala men's understandings of the epidemic and condom use in Western Province. The Gogodala are a Christian‐based society and many blame the national condom promotion strategy for an increase in promiscuity and for ‘turning sex into a game’. Condom availability in this rural area continues to be restricted to a family planning program that promotes Christian values and excludes unmarried men. I explore the male condom dilemma where young men are more concerned with avoiding accusations that their sexual behaviour puts them at risk of contracting HIV despite acknowledging the preventative value of using condoms. In this context young men disassociate themselves from the disease and condom use through a process of calculated risk or risk minimisation.     

The Politics of Media Infrastructure: Mobile Phones and Emergent Forms of Public Communication in Papua New Guinea

Recent work in anthropology proposes that the ethnographic study of infrastructure offers a productive way to think about how states and corporations, citizens and consumers, all define their relations and obligations to each other. This article considers the politics of media infrastructure in Papua New Guinea (PNG) by tracing the moral economy of mobile phones. It focuses on (1) how mobile phone users have taken to social media to express dissatisfaction with the dominant mobile network operator, Digicel, a privately owned foreign company; and (2) how the PNG state has attempted to regulate the use of mobile phones and social media through cybercrime legislation and registration of Subscriber Identity Modules (SIM cards). Consideration of these two issues – matters of concern that gather publics around them – enables an assessment of the promise of improved telecommunications and social media, in particular, to make government in PNG more accountable and transparent.     

Trade's Value: Relational Transactions in the Papua New Guinea Betel Nut Trade

The betel nut trade in Papua New Guinea is big business. Betel nut, a mild indigenous stimulant, is considered the ‘green gold of the grassroots’. It is the country's most significant domestic cash crop and, in terms of rural incomes, a rival to the dominant export cash crops. Its sale is an important livelihood strategy in both rural and urban areas, the most visible manifestation of a flourishing informal economy. In betel nut marketplaces money ‘flows’ and ‘overflows’, traders wield large wads of cash, and vast sums change hands. Whether seeking their fortunes or only tinned fish, people trade betel nut first and foremost to make money, but such interests in trade do not automatically displace other forms of value. This paper is concerned with marketplaces and trade in contemporary Papua New Guinea and what is conveyed in those transactions between buyer and seller. Against the often impersonal and utilitarian rendering of trade, this paper seeks to foreground the sociability of trade and the multiple forms of value that may be simultaneously attached to monetised market transactions. This is not to conceal the discrete, unenduring, and competitive dynamics of trade, which prominently feature in many betel nut transactions, but instead to examine an important dynamic often overlooked. Market transactions, far from being asocial, or even socially destructive, have the capacity to generate and sustain diverse social relations including those of kinship and friendship.     

Knowledge,Morality and ‘Kastom’: SikAIDS among Young Yupno People,Finisterre Range,Papua New Guinea

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the extent of knowledge about HIV/AIDS among young Yupno women and men. Local understanding of sikAIDS is shaped by cultural, moral and religious concepts and processes that are based on social values and practices. Difficulties these young people face in accessing information about HIV/AIDS and using it to implement preventative measures — for example by obtaining condoms — have to be seen in the framework of ‘kastom’ and a moral discourse coined and influenced by the Lutheran Church. As the research shows, there is an urgent need for a broad and contextually sensitive approach to sexual health, including information about conception, family planning methods, and sexually transmitted diseases when planning awareness campaigns for teenagers in rural regions.     

Mapping prehistoric social fields on the Sepik coast of Papua New Guinea: ceramic compositional analysis using laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry

The Sepik coast of northern Papua New Guinea is one of the most linguistically diverse places on earth despite communities there currently being connected into wide-reaching social and economic networks that cross language boundaries. One possible explanation for observed human diversity is that social connections were substantially less intensive prior to colonial pacification. As a proxy for human interaction, we compositionally analyzed 287 ceramic sherds from archaeological contexts using laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) to determine their place of production. Our results indicate that ceramics produced on Tumleo Island—currently the most important regional ceramic producer—were transported to other places on the Sepik coast after ∼1000 BP, suggesting that linguistic diversity on the coast has been maintained in an interactive environment for at least a millennium.     

Mother's Umbilicus and Father's Spirit: The Dialectics of Selfhood of a Yagwoia Transgendered Person

ABSTRACT This is an ethnographic exploration of a Yagwoia transgendered person and his‐her life‐situation within the specificities of libidinal dynamics and economy of intersubjective relationships that constitute Yagwoia matrix of kinship and affinal relatedness. Developed within a framework of psychoanalysis and existential phenomenology, and forged through a long‐term field research, this study offers an in‐depth perspective on concrete realities of gender experience and social existence in an Angan life‐world of east Papua New Guinea.     

From Blood to Oil: Mining,Cosmology, and Human Sacrifice in Central New Guinea

This article explores the intersection between cosmological history and mining geography among the Oksapmin of West Sepik Province. I show that the recent intrusion of mining activity into the local area has catalysed a revival of indigenous religious traditions to explain the occurrence and ownership of the precious materials believed to exist within the ground. Through an analysis of these parts of local cosmological history used to explain contemporary mining, I also seek to ethnographically and historically position the Oksapmin as a hybrid culture mutually influenced by the intersection of two overlapping regional cultural spheres: the Min cultural region, based on the ancestress Afek to the west, and a western highlands model based on sacrificial ritual to restore the vitality of the biocosmos, to the east. This builds upon earlier research done by anthropologists in the area that, on the one hand, portrays the Oksapmin as an anomalous ethnic group in the Min culture area and, on the other hand, that has stressed links between groups lying on either side of the upper Strickland Gorge. I also argue that the Oksapmin, Duna, and Bimin groups all shared a unique trans‐Strickland cosmological identity characterised by the pursuit of world renewal by means of human sacrifice.     

Logging,Violence and Pleasure: Neoliberalism,Civil Society and Corporate Governance in West New Britain

ABSTRACT The postcolonial world of Melanesia is made up of diverse experiments, which combine modern and customary technologies of power into new hybrid assemblages. In the 1990s, there occurred a proliferation of landowner companies in rural New Britain. This happened in a context of neoliberalism where the state divested itself of many functions and services by allocating these to a supposedly more efficient private sector. In the Kaliai area, this new economic partnership between state and capital gave rise to more militarised forms of policing, which sought to protect logging by a large Malaysian company from growing local unrest. Supplementing these coercive state actions were private strategies, which used sorcery to intimidate opponents to logging as well as rivals within the landowner company. Opponents were bought off and alliances created through using customary exchange relations as well as through modern gifts of money, western goods and commoditised pleasures.