Contributions to the Cladocera fauna from Papua New Guinea

Twenty-eight taxa of the Cladocera are identified in collections from Papua New Guinea, 17 being new records for New Guinea, bringing the total number of Cladocera taxa reported for this region to 39. Most of the taxa are circumtropical. One species (Sarsilatona papuana) is endemic to Papua New Guinea and northern Australia. The species list includes two species that are normally listed as Holarctic:Alonella nana andAlona rustica. Widespread genera such asDaphnia, Pleuroxus, Disparalona, Acroperus were strikingly absent from the Papua New Guinean material.     

Women and development: A highland New Guinea example

This paper presents an analysis of household variables and their relationship to success in cash cropping among the Gainj of Madang Province, Papua New Guinea. Censuses and household surveys from 1978, the year in which cash cropping began, and 1983 provide data that show different patterns of change in household structure for more and less commercially successful households. The results illustrate the importance of women's labor in economic development and the dynamic nature of the relationship between household structure and economic development.     

Prefigured Features: A view from the New Guinea Highlands

Stimulated by a conference on Portraiture and the Problematics of Representation, which aimed to address portraiture as a set of cultural practices under the rubric of ‘any body-representation that stands for an individual’, in this paper I ask some questions raised by materials from Papua New Guinea. I begin with an investigation of the notion of individuation in relation to the heads which are taken in Asmat and Marind-Anim headhunting. I argue that if anyone's individuality is represented by a captured head it is that of the new owner, not his deceased victim. I then turn to Hagen feather plaques and suggest that they are best understood as assemblages of material resulting from mobilising relations, and hence not as portraits embodying notions of likeness.