Knowing and the truth: Three histories of Daugo Island,Papua New Guinea

Courts of law in Melanesian countries, particularly in the aftermath of the colonial period, have attempted to accommodate ‘custom’. In Papua New Guinea they commonly hear land claims under terms of reference that acknowledge the wide variety of customs among the many ethno‐linguistic groups comprising the nation. A corollary of this liberalism is that, in theory, they admit ‘traditional evidence’ including legends and myths. Yet as courts of law they are required to apply some criteria of proof and to search for the ‘truth’ by examining the ‘facts’. A long‐running land case from Papua New Guinea and its aftermath raises interesting questions about what happens when oral history encounters these legal imperatives, and may help us appreciate why Melanesians often do not regard a court's decision as final.     

Female spirit cults as a window on gender relations in the highlands of Papua New Guinea

Early writings on male cults in the highlands of Papua New Guinea tended to stress the exclusion of women and the collective agency of men. Looking at a subset of these cults from the Western and Southern Highlands Provinces, centering on Female Spirit figures, the authors argue that in these cases the cults are better understood as expressions of a collaborative model, in which gendered cooperation, both in practice and in terms of ritual symbolism, is activated in order to produce fertility and wealth. Positive collaboration is involved as well as structural complementarity. The collaborative model is therefore suggested as an alternative to the model of "male exclusivity" in the analysis of certain cult practices in these parts of the New Guinea highlands region.     

Cultural Competency and Rural Disorder in PNG Health Promotion

ABSTRACT

Health workers in Papua New Guinea strongly emphasise their duty to provide services to the country’s rural majority. Trained to see rural communities as lacking modern discipline and order, they worry that rural people will resist, perhaps with violence, if health workers fail to ‘show respect for culture’. Examining cultural improvisation among nursing students on a rural experience practicum in the Eastern Highlands, I show how students and teachers tried to craft culturally respectful health education. However, when difficulties emerged, local people were described as unable or unwilling to harim tok (understand, heed or follow instructions). The capacity to follow instructions, cultivated through education and Christian faith, was cast as incompatible with Highlands culture. Rural health promotion activities, when they fail to foment major transformation, can help reproduce the ideological construction of the people of the hauslain (village, hamlet) as emotionally volatile and ungovernable.     

Bound Blood: Paiela `Conception‘ Theory Interpreted

While aboriginal populations have been widely reported to entertain magico-religious beliefs concerning conception, the Paiela of the Papua New Guinea Highlands apparently do not. Semen, it is thought, must wrap around menstrual blood many times to keep it from ‘coming outside’ if the woman is to conceive. Bound blood forms the foetus. This seemingly naturalistic view is herein examined for its symbolic content. Uaiela ‘conception’ theory, it is argued, reflects not natural but social structural processes. It constitutes a complex statement, in a metaphoric mode, about the logically prior social arrangements in which conception is embedded and through which sexual reproduction becomes organized. Paiela ‘conception’ theory is revealed to be much broader in its range of competence than Western conception theory; and its relationship to Lévi-Strauss' Elementary Structures of Kinship is explored at the close.     

An Oceanic revolution? Stella and the construction of new femininities in Papua New Guinea and the Pacific

In August 2012, a new magazine for women was released in Papua New Guinea (PNG). Entitled Stella, the magazine provides an ideal opportunity to analyse shifting constructions of gender among educated, employed women in PNG and elsewhere in the Pacific. Drawing on interviews, surveys and readers’ letters, this article discusses Papua New Guinean women who, because they display ‘modern attributes’, are maligned and discredited as ‘inauthentic’. It then goes on to document the ways in which Stella is enabling such women to assert themselves anew. Arguing that the publication of Stella marks the arrival into the public sphere of a group hitherto consigned to the margins of Pacific societies on the basis that they represent an ‘inauthentic minority’, the article makes an important contribution to scholarly discussion about the emergence of new femininities in PNG and the Pacific.     

A Social Anthropologist's View of Papua New Guinea Highlands Prehistory

The Highlands of Papua New Guinea have usually been regarded as relatively homogeneous, socially, culturally, and ecologically. In this article I begin with the view that the ethnography of the Eastern and Western Highlands shows great diversity. I argue that this diversity is also evident in the prehistory of the Highlands and that the Eastern and Western Highlands have followed markedly different paths in the development of agriculture and pig husbandry and in their rates of change and transformation. Intensive agriculture and linked pig exchange are very old in the Western Highlands, nascent in the Eastern Highlands. This difference is clear in the ethnographic present, but I argue that it is upon the very different prehistories of the Eastern and Western Highlands that a synchronic comparison of Highlands societies should be mounted.     

Introduction: The Politics of Order in Contemporary Papua New Guinea

ABSTRACT

This collection of articles seeks to demonstrate that the concept of order – the intensive and extensive coordination of human action across space and time – is useful for answering some of the most pressing theoretical and practical questions in contemporary Papua New Guinea (PNG) today. Building on existing work in this field [Benda-Beckmann, K., and F. Pirie. 2007. “Introduction.” In Order and Disorder: Anthropological Perspectives, 1–15. New York: Berghahn Books] in this special issue we ask: How do people create enduring, stable, and routinised life in contemporary Melanesia today? We position our work as the next step in a growing movement to study contemporary institutions in PNG as order-making projects, rather than attempting to divide them into legitimate projects like ‘government’ and false or ineffective ones like ‘cargo cults’.     

Malate dehydrogenase types in the Asian-Pacific area,and a description of new phenotypes

A survey of more than 21 000 haemolysates from blood samples collected in various parts of south and southeast Asia, Australasia and the Western Pacific and examined in this laboratory has revealed several new alleles controlling variants of sMDH; in addition, further information has been provided on the distribution of sMDH3 in New Guinea. Two of the variant alleles, sMDH3 and sMDH6, achieve polymorphic frequency in various populations. sMDH3 is widely distributed in New Guinea, with highest frequencies in the Eastern Highlands. The pattern of its distribution suggests the mutant arose originally in a Papuan-speaking population. So far, sMDH6 has been detected only in Micronesians from a number of islands in the Carolines. A single example of another new variant, sMDH 5-1, and two examples of a slow variant, sMDH 7-1, were detected in samples from Iran and Singapore, respectively. No examples of mMDH variants were found in a total of 652 placental extracts from Papua New Guinea and Australia.     

Where all the rivers flow west: Maps,abstraction and change in the Papua New Guinea lowlands

‘Abstraction’ has been often identified as a key element in social change. Analyses, however, have often conflated the ideas of abstraction as ‘object’ and as ‘process’. This paper discusses two maps drawn by or on behalf of Kubo men, of the interior lowlands of southern Papua New Guinea. They were drawn in the context of recent exposure to a vast Liquefied Natural Gas project initiated on the land of their neighbours and both, as abstractions from new observations and experiences, were intended as assertions of rights to land. They derived, however, from entirely different logics: one more compatible with ‘Western’ understandings of ownership, the other more in keeping with earlier Kubo understandings of belonging. By reference to these maps, we consider the role of abstraction in social change and argue that while, as object, abstraction is relative as a process it is universal.     

Barefoot in the OR.

In 1988 Dr. Sylvia Uhthoff Munro, an Ottawa general practitioner, and her husband Martin Munro, a professional engineer, spent a year at a small hospital in Ialibu, in the Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea. The way medicine is practised there may be primitive by Canadian standards, she learned, but the country also proved to be a valuable classroom, one where the lessons came very quickly.     

AIDS and ‘building a wall’ around Christian country in rural Papua New Guinea

This paper explores an ongoing dialogue about Christianity in light of the recent influx of HIV and AIDS into the villages of the Gogodala of Western Province, Papua New Guinea. I argue that a suggestion by a woman in late 2004 to ‘build a wall’ around the Gogodala region in Western Province in order to stop or slow the spread of HIV/AIDS reflects a recent concern with the sustainability of this rural Christian community, referred to in English as ‘Christian country’. Understanding AIDS to be a threat posed largely from outsiders, whether Papua New Guinean or European, sections of these primarily village‐based communities aim to create both a physical and metaphorical boundary between themselves and outsiders. At present, local prevention and intervention strategies concerning HIV and AIDS focus on conservative, evangelical narratives about the preservation of the principles and practices of Christian country, through the repudiation of unrestrained sexuality, for example, which is believed to be increasingly prevalent not only in their own area but throughout urban Papua New Guinea. A growing divide between rural and urban Gogodala, then, has become a major part of the local dialogue about AIDS and represents significant contestation over the practices and ideational basis of Christian country.     

The Death of the Big Men: Depreciation of Elites in New Guinea

Recently, Tolai people of Papua New Guinea have adopted the term ‘Big Shot’ to describe an emerging post-colonial political elite. The emergence of the term is a negative moral evaluation of new social possibilities that have arisen as a consequence of the Big Shots’ privileged position within a global political economy. Grassroots Tolai pass judgment on the Big Shots’ through rhetorical contrast with idealised Big Men of the past, in a particular local version of a global trend for the emergence of new words to illustrate changing perceptions of local elites. As such the ‘Big Shot’ acts as an example of a global process in which key lexical categories that contest, trace and shape how global historical change is experienced are constituted through linguistic categories.     

Holocene palynology and sea-level change in two estuaries in Southern Irian Jaya

Southern New Guinea leads the continental Australian plate into convergence to form the New Guinea Highlands. Extensive inter-tidal deltas are typical of much of this low gradient equatorial coastline. In two adjacent estuaries in Irian Jaya (West Papua), this study uses present elevations of mangrove species zones as a finite indicator of Holocene sea levels from pollen diagrams of estuarine cores. All cores showed mangroves at levels well below the present tidal range, with landward species zones being replaced over time by seaward zones. Results show tectonic subsidence in the recent period, with Late Holocene relative sea-level rise of 0.67 mm year⁻¹.     

Earliest Pottery on New Guinea Mainland Reveals Austronesian Influences in Highland Environments 3000 Years Ago

Austronesian speaking peoples left Southeast Asia and entered the Western Pacific c.4000-3000 years ago, continuing on to colonise Remote Oceania for the first time, where they became the ancestral populations of Polynesians. Understanding the impact of these peoples on the mainland of New Guinea before they entered Remote Oceania has eluded archaeologists. New research from the archaeological site of Wañelek in the New Guinea Highlands has broken this silence. Petrographic and geochemical data from pottery and new radiocarbon dating demonstrates that Austronesian influences penetrated into the highland interior by 3000 years ago. One potsherd was manufactured along the northeast coast of New Guinea, whereas others were manufactured from inland materials. These findings represent the oldest securely dated pottery from an archaeological context on the island of New Guinea. Additionally, the pottery comes from the interior, suggesting the movements of people and technological practices, as well as objects at this time. The antiquity of the Wañelek pottery is coincident with the expansion of Lapita pottery in the Western Pacific. Such occupation also occurs at the same time that changes have been identified in subsistence strategies in the archaeological record at Kuk Swamp suggesting a possible link between the two.     

From Racing to Rugby: All Work and No Play for Gogodala Men of Western Province,Papua New Guinea

In this article, I analyse how Gogodala men in Western Province approach the sport of rugby league football as an extension of the practice of canoe racing. Despite colonial changes and mission attempts to redeem canoe racing by labelling them ‘cultural games’, canoe races continue to embody clan relations and demonstrate inner masculine strength, collective clan power and a local work ethic. Although there has been a general lack of attention given to studies of sport in Papua New Guinea, a discourse has emerged that analyses sports competitions as either a modern form of play and a replacement for past ritual activities or as a contemporary exemplar of warfare and other eradicated practices. As the Gogodala have not practised headhunting or warfare for over one hundred years, I want to contribute to this discussion by exploring how contemporary canoe racing and rugby league form an integral part of conceptualisations of work and dala ela gi, or ‘the male way of life’.     

Studies of the incidence, severity and distribution of false rust (Synchytrium psophocarpi), leaf spot (Pseudocercospora psophocarpi) and powdery mildew (Oidium sp.) on winged bean (Psophocarpus tetragonolobus) in Papua New Guinea

The incidence, severity and distribution of false rust, (Synchytrium psophocarpi), leaf spot (Pseudocercospora psophocarpi) and powdery mildew (Oidium sp.) on winged beans (Psophocarpus tetragonolobus) were evaluated on pure lines and mixed stands grown in Papua New Guinea between 1976 and 1978. Almost all of the 148 pure lines were susceptible to false rust and leaf spot and the incidence of these diseases increased with plant age. Standard area diagrams were superior to disease keys in evaluating disease severity. Levels of false rust on 10 promising agronomic lines differed according to the locality where the lines were grown. Two Thai lines showed resistance to false rust but P. scandens was immune to false rust and leaf spot. Surveys of 51 sites containing mixed stands of winged beans in the Eastern Highlands, Western Highlands, East New Britain, East Sepik, Madang and Morobe Provinces of Papua New Guinea indicated that leaf spot and false rust were present in both the wet and dry seasons and the apparent absence of disease was probably due to time and size of samples. The diseases appeared to be present in all the traditional winged bean growing areas of Papua New Guinea. It was difficult to obtain evidence of differences in palatability of tissues infected with false rust. The value of surveys and disease assessment in relation to evaluation of crop losses of winged bean caused by these pathogens and selection for resistance is discussed.     

Finding the good: Reactive modernity among the Gebusi,in the Pacific,and elsewhere

Conditions of being left behind in economic and political terms are keenly felt in many areas of Melanesia and the wider Pacific Islands—as is more generally the case in many developing and also developed countries. Insofar as modern expectations portend a future that should be improving, it is unsurprising that modern expectations or entitlements are throttled by economic and political downturns across many cultural and class conditions. Ensuing circumstances are not so much ‘post’ modern—since ideals of modern progress are not given up—as they are ‘reactively’ modern in cultural terms. In this context, a poignant and longstanding sense of backwardness in many areas of the insular Pacific arguably provides a cultural bellwether of increasingly widespread perceptions and reactions elsewhere. Among the Gebusi of Papua New Guinea prolonged economic downturn under conditions of marginality and remoteness has thrown people back on their own material and cultural resources. Despite a general absence of cash economy, monetisation or fiscalisation of ‘work’ increasingly orchestrates social relations. So, too, in the absence of government presence, police, or courts, mechanisms of dispute mediation have become locally developed and effectively elaborated, including through rhetorics of monetary compensation that were previously undeveloped in indigenous contexts of person‐for‐person exchange both in marriage and in death. In selected ways, reactive modernity among Gebusi has features that seem salutary—evoking an ‘anthropology of the good’—despite and even because of Gebusi's politicoeconomic marginality. Drawing on work by Ortner, Robbins, and others, the larger relevance of this development reframes the relevance of Dark Anthropology and an Anthropology of the Good.     

Afterword: In Search of Melanesian Order

ABSTRACT

These essays explore three contemporary forms of order in Papua New Guinea: improvised village courts, a nursing school curriculum including village practicums, and student boycotts and strikes. My comments assess these new sorts of order as reflected against earlier ethnographic accounts of Papua New Guinean societies as well as those elsewhere in Melanesia. This often has taken the region’s social groups and lineages, religions and belief systems, and most recently the Melanesian state itself to be weak, messy, and inconstant. I ask how culturally ‘Melanesian’ are these contemporary examples of order and disorder, and find significant continuities in their underlying nostalgia for an imagined, more orderly past, in beliefs about causes of disorder, and in strategies and remedies to order and reorder everyday life.     

A Place against Time: Land and Environment in the Papua New Guinea Highlands

Place against Time: Land and Environment in the Papua New Guinea Highlands. Paul Sillitoe. London: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1996. 438 pp.     

Women,mobile phones,and M16s: Contemporary New Guinea highlands warfare

This paper reports upon a series of recent developments in New Guinea highlands warfare. Building upon existing literature highlighting the deep influence of modernity within this context, we draw attention to two particular developments yet to be reported in the literature and which appear to be of special significance. Through an analysis of Aiya warfare, Southern Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea, we document the direct and increasing involvement of women within warfare, as well as the important role played by mobile phones used by warriors to communicate before and during fighting. These two developments are situated in relation to broader shifts currently reshaping Melanesian sociality, namely, the ambivalent and fraught position of women within an emergent PNG society, as well as the rapid diffusion of mobile phone technology throughout the region.