WOMEN'S FACIAL TATTOOING AMONG THE MAISIN OF ORO PROVINCE,PAPUA NEW GUINEA: THE CHANGING SIGNIFICANCE OF AN ANCIENT CUSTOM

The Maisin women of northeastern Papua New Guinea are among the last coastal Papuans to tattoo their faces. This article first describes the techniques and social process of Maisin tattooing. We then examine the resilience of the custom in light of changes in puberty rites and notions of gender. We argue that these contexts have lost their cultural salience as a result of the Maisins' incorporation into the larger Papua New Guinea society. Tattooing has acquired new significance as a marker of cultural identity in a multicultural setting and as a sign of the Maisin people's commercial success as makers of indigenous art.     

Public Policy and Emerging Sources of Technology and Technical Information Available to Industry

As technologies grow in complexity, firms often target their internal R&D resources on core competencies and utilize outside sources for supporting knowledge and technology. Where do firms turn to find such resources? This paper reports the perceptions of technology transfer managers in United States manufacturing firms toward federal and university labs and identifies the types of farms that are better positioned to utilize externally available technological resources. Based on replies from research-intensive companies within the United States, the authors find that larger firms with high research and development (R&D) budgets tend to ascribe greater significance to external sources than do smaller ones. Also, companies spending over $500 million in R&D rank universities the most significant external source of knowledge, followed by V S.-based firms, and then foreign firms.