The impacts of education and institutional trust on citizens’ willingness to report corruption: lessons from Papua New Guinea

Educated citizens are often considered more likely to report corruption; this belief shapes anti-corruption campaigns. However, we know little about how other factors may interact with education’s impact on willingness to report corruption. This article examines data from a household survey undertaken in Papua New Guinea. We find considerable support for the notion that education encourages a greater willingness to report various types of corruption to officials. While our results indicate that this is especially the case when respondents believe that corruption would be addressed by the government, they also show that secondary and post-secondary levels of education can have a positive impact even among those who do not have much faith in reporting institutions. However, the results also suggest that academics and policy-makers should be sensitive to the way trust in the state impacts educated citizens’ willingness to report different kinds of corruption.     

Imagining Kawthoolei: Strategies of petitioning for Karen statehood in Burma in the first half of the 20th century

Academic and media writing about the Karen ethnic group in Myanmar most often associates the group with war and insurgency. This article focuses instead on the different strategies and rhetorical arguments––and the ideological notions that underpinned them––adopted by the Karen in their informal and formal petitions for recognition and statehood from the early decades of the 20th century, through the Second World War, to the mid‐1950s, including previously unexamined evidence of an early Karen attempt to gain UN recognition. In following these efforts, we track imaginings of Karen nationhood over time through shifting and conflicting territorial claims and persistent, multifaceted diplomatic attempts to realize the material existence of the Karen homeland, Kawthoolei.     

Representation and knowledge in the prehistoric rock art of Africa

This study proposes that prehistoric rock art in Africa represents aspects of the natural and social environment which are aesthetically charged, for practical and symbolic reasons, and which are also problematic, in specific ways, for ordinary, untutored perception. Rock art functions as a medium of communication in three principal contexts. It refers to an extended network of ritual acts and beliefs, to out-of-the-ordinary perception and knowledge, and to adaptively significant local information. Rock art is therefore a particular, specialized instrument of the production process. Investigating the study of prehistoric art from art historical, archaeological, and anthropological points of view, the paper examines the ways in which the original contexts of function or meaning might be reconstituted, given the special nature and constraints of graphic representation as a mode of knowledge. Three major traditions of prehistoric rock art in Africa, the Sahara, Nile valley, and southern, are the focus of discussion and source of examples. The paper takes as a general theme the feasibility or possibility of an adequate archaeology of prehistoric knowledge.

---

Résumé La présente étude propose que l'art rupestre préhistorique en Afrique représente des aspects du milieu naturel et social, exprimés de façon esthétique pour des raisons pratiques et symboliques, et qui présentent aussi des problèmes particuliers face à une perception non instruite. L'art rupestre sert de moyen de communication dans trois contextes principaux: il fait allusion à un réseau compliqué de croyances et d'actes rituels, à une perception et à des connaissances hors de l'ordinaire et à des renseignements locaux affectant l'adaptation. L'art rupestre figure donc comme instrument particulier et spécialisé dans le processus de production. En vérifiant l'étude de l'art préhistorique des points de vue historique, archéologique et anthropologique de l'art, l'article examine les façons selon lesquelles les contextes originaux de la fonction ou la signification pourraient être reconstitués, selon la nature et les contraintes spéciales de la représentation graphique comme genre de connaissance. La discussion se centre sur trois traditions principales d'art rupestre préhistorique, celles du Sahara, de la vallée du Nil et de l'Afrique du Sud, d'où sont aussi tirés les exemples. L'article a pour thème général la possibilité d'une archéologie mieux adaptée à la reconstruction des modes de connaissance préhistorique.

     

SOME THIRD WORLD ENVIRONMENTAL PERCEPTIONS AND BEHAVIOURS CONCERNING URBAN WASTE: A SURVEY OF TECHIMAN, GHANA

Third World solid and semisolid urban wastes may contain human faecal matter, which is particularly hazardous to health. A survey of a typical West African city revealed five behaviours and five attitudes or perceptions associated with public and domestic refuse and its disposal, and some relationships with gender, educational level, and ethnicity. Actual health hazards were not generally perceived, nor was urban waste considered one of the three major urban problems. In the Third World as in the First World, urban waste constitutes a multifaceted problem whose resolution requires co-ordinated efforts on many fronts—economic, ecologic, and cultural.
Au Tiers-Monde, les déhets urbains solides et semisolides peuvent contenir des matières fécales humaines qui sont des facteurs de risque pour la santé humaine. L'enquête menée dans une ville typique d'Afrique de l'ouest revele cinq comportements et cinq attitudes ou perceptions associés avec les déchets publics et domestiques et leur enlèvement, et des relations statistiques avec le sexe, niveau d'éducation, et l'ethnie. Les dangers réels pour la santé n'ont pas été retenus, et, les déchets urbains n'ontpas été considérés comme étant un des trois problèmes urbains majeurs. Au Tiers-Monde comme dans les pays développés, les déchets urbains constituent un probléme très complexe dont les solutions requièrent les efforts coordonnes de plusieurs champs d'activité, que ce soit au niveau konomique, ecologique ou culturel.     

Book reviews

The Restless Urban Landscape. Paul L. Knox (Ed.), New Jersey, Prentice Hall, 1993, 285pp.

Towards a New Economic Order: Postfordism, Ecology and Democracy. Alain Lipietz, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1992, 206pp.

London: A New Metropolitan Geography. Keith Hoggart and David R. Green (Eds), London, Edward Arnold, 1992, pbk.

Regional Innovation Policy: Case‐studies from the Ruhr Area, Baden‐Württemberg and the North East of England. Robert Hassink, Faculteit Ruimtelijke Wetenschappen Rijksuniversiteit, 1992, 187pp., ISBN 90–6809–155–7.

Environmental Problems in Eastern Europe. F. W. Carter and D. Turnock (Eds), London, Routledge, 1993, 249 pp., ISBN 0–415–06229–2.

From Garden Cities to New Towns: Campaigning for town and Country Planning 1899–1946.. Dennis Hardy, London, E. and F. N. Spon, 1992, 340pp., £39.95 hbk.