Contemporary Papua Research Articles

MODERASI BERAGAMA DI PAPUA: Rekonstruksi Identitas dan Resolusi Kehidupan Keagamaan Pasca Konflik Papua 1998-2001

This article analyzes the phenomenon of religious moderation in contemporary Papua. This problem is an interesting phenomenon, because since Papua became part of Indonesia in 1969, socio-religious developments in this region have often been colored by an atmosphere of disharmony between adherents of religions, and this atmosphere even contributed to the 1998-2001 Papuan conflict. However, after the conflict, religious moderation programs and counseling were carried out massively. This research seeks to reconstruct religious identity that supports the resolution of post-conflict religious life in Papua. This article focuses on the problem of why religious moderation occurs and what the implications are for religious life in Papua today. This research was conducted with a historical and socio-religious approach, as well as using historical research methods in which there are four stages, namely: heuristics, criticism, interpretation, and historiography. The findings of this study are: First, the 1998-2001 conflict in Papua was largely caused by a lack of nationalism and respect for fellow citizens. Second, post-conflict religious moderation efforts have been carried out by all religions and mass organizations in Papua. Religious leaders: Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism have played a role in the resolution and harmonization of religious life in Papua. Third, religious moderation in Papua greatly impacts social and spiritual aspects. Brotherhood in Papua does not look at religion, ethnicity, and culture, and issues surrounding an independent Papua are issues that undermine harmony in Papua.

What women want: Fashion, morality and gendered subjectivities in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea

This article brings Papua New Guinean women’s perspectives on fashion, gender and morality into conversation with questions of colonial histories and global consumerism. The article shows that adherence to social norms is policed by women in the public sphere and that one person’s choices are enmeshed in ideas of responsibility and obligation to others. Increasingly, younger generations of women believe it is an individual woman’s right to wear what she wants in Papua New Guinea (PNG). Yet young women confront their peers in much the same way older women do. What women wear in PNG is embroiled in ideas of collective morality; plays out at intersections of class, age, race and gender; and demonstrates tensions between ideas of autonomy and collectivity. On whose terms do contemporary Papua New Guinean women get to decide how to dress: their own, or in accordance with community norms and standards? What are the contemporary and historical contexts of whiteness and colonial power that have influenced these norms and standards? This article brings together the experiences and perspective of a young professional Papua New Guinean woman, and her relatives, in dialogue with a young English–Iranian woman anthropologist.

Harvests, Feasts and Graves: Postcultural Consciousness in Contemporary Papua New Guinea, by Ryan Schram

Harvests, Feasts and Graves: Postcultural Consciousness in Contemporary Papua New Guinea, by Ryan Schram

Pacific Women in Politics: Gender Quota Campaigns in the Pacific Islands by Kerryn Baker

Reviewed by: Pacific Women in Politics: Gender Quota Campaigns in the Pacific Islands by Kerryn Baker Monique Mironesco Pacific Women in Politics: Gender Quota Campaigns in the Pacific Islands, by Kerryn Baker. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2019. isbn hardback: 9780824872595, 212 pages, illustrations, references, and index. Hardback, us$68.00. The Pacific Islands context is rife with opportunities for analysis of women’s participation in contemporary politics. Kerryn Baker’s Pacific Women in Politics: Gender Quota Campaigns in the Pacific Islands, the latest addition to the University of Hawai‘i Press’s Topics in the Contemporary Pacific Series, edited by Brij Lal and Jack Corbett, makes an important contribution in this area through an exploration of the diversity of recent gender quota campaigns in Sāmoa, Papua New Guinea, Bougainville, and France’s Pacific territories. As noted by the editors, Baker offers a theoretical approach to exploring the merits of the different gender quota campaigns and a “how-to” overview of the processes that brought the campaigns to fruition (viii). Using interviews with campaign participants, Baker outlines the paths followed in each setting, participants’ varying definitions of “success,” and the distinctive outcomes of each. Significantly, she brings gender quota literature into conversation with the Pacific Islands context. Baker also successfully examines the colonial legacies of these four geographic spaces in terms of traditional gender roles and cultural norms in order to argue for increased women’s participation in the political sphere. That said, the book’s methods and data section is lacking, and the author does not sufficiently situate herself in relation to her interviewees. While the depth and breadth of the interviews are significant, the absence of analysis of the researcher’s positionality is problematic. The book’s central chapters consider the geographical and political contexts in which, and processes by which, each gender quota campaign was organized and, where successful, implemented, with one chapter devoted to each. Chapter 2 examines the path toward and successful implementation of Sāmoa’s parliamentary gender quota campaign, which called for 10 percent of seats to be reserved for women prior to the 2016 election. Baker begins the chapter by analyzing historical changes to the fa‘amatai system, the extended family unit headed by a chosen matai (chief or titleholder), explaining that women’s complementary gender roles and influence within Sāmoa’s feagaiga (sacred covenant) were diminished as a result of colonial and missionary influences (31). She argues that women’s lack of participation in contemporary Samoan politics can be attributed to the matai title system and the notion that women are more risk averse than men when it comes to seeking public office (34). Sāmoa’s parliamentary gender quota campaign sought to address this disparity, and it received a boost when it gained the support of Prime Minister Tuila‘epa in 2011. The varying involvement of international nongovernmental organizations is a running theme in all four case studies. In Sāmoa, those who opposed the gender quota campaign argued that outside involvement evoked colonial hegemony and that anything supported by international nongovernmental organizations [End Page 287] should be avoided. Ultimately, Baker argues that political stability in Sāmoa resulting from the prime minister’s leadership was instrumental to the gender quota system’s passing. Chapter 3 is distinguished from the other chapters by its focus on Papua New Guinea’s “unsuccessful” gender quota campaigns for nominated and reserved legislative seats. Contemporary Papua New Guinean culture ascribes gender norms that perpetuate male-dominated public political participation (64). Notably, opposition to the gender quota campaign painted women’s political participation as promulgated by urban, elite, educated women—a demographic sometimes portrayed as less culturally “authentic” than rural women and as promoting a Western approach to women’s political participation. Although the gender quota campaign prior to the 2012 general election was not ultimately successful (it was not adopted), Baker demonstrates that the political actors she interviewed did not all characterize the campaign as a failure. Rather, they found success in women’s overall increased participation in Papua New Guinea’s national political decision-making process as a result of the campaign. Chapter 4 situates Bougainville’s gender quota campaign...

Bridewealth a Pardon: New Relationships and Restoration of Good Daughters

ABSTRACTBridewealth is recognized as vital in the reproduction and reconfiguration of Pacific environments and women play an integral role in this process. In contemporary Papua New Guinea (PNG), bridewealth is reconfigured by kin to acknowledge the considered actions of women as they enter into relationships with men. This paper will explore how women's choices impact and influence their experience of these exchanges and determine the role of women and their kin as they undertake these practices. Here I aim to understand how the social relatedness that frames bridewealth exchanges enables the practices of bridewealth to be used as a tool for recognition of women's choices, autonomy and personhood. Although women enter into relationships without initial kin approval, bridewealth practices converge ultimately with a women's autonomous choice of husband. Wardlow suggests (2006:86) 'bridewealth confers value and dignity on female gender', and going beyond her observation, I show that bridewealth has been useful in achieving this in regard to managing and supporting social, kin and affinal relationships. This article will explore two cases, to identify what each tells us about women's ability to act in ways that are beneficial to them and important to kin. I show how moral evaluations frame (pasin) and recognize (luksave) kin and social relationships that ultimately constitute their personhood.

Harvests, Feasts, and Graves: Postcultural Consciousness in Contemporary Papua New Guinea. RyanSchram. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018. 276 pp.

Harvests, Feasts, and Graves: Postcultural Consciousness in Contemporary Papua New Guinea. RyanSchram. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018. 276 pp.

Introduction: The Politics of Order in Contemporary Papua New Guinea

ABSTRACTThis 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’.

‘I Was Attracted to Him Because of His Money’: Changing Forms of Polygyny in Contemporary Papua New Guinea

Substantial economic transition in Papua New Guinea (PNG) is giving rise to increased wealth, rapid social change and changing cultural practices. Polygyny practices in PNG have come under increasing domestic attention in recent years, especially as pertains to reinforcing patriarchy and exacerbating gender inequality. Based on qualitative research with women, we identify a new ‘emerging polygyny’ that is located in women’s and girls’ choices, decisions, experiences and actions, and which contrasts with other research documenting polygyny from men’s perspectives. Narratives from female participants described young women and girls who actively seek polygynous relationships with men who have disposable income and other assets, with the aim of gaining access to economic wealth as co-wives. In the context of public and legal debate about the status of polygyny in PNG, these findings illustrate the need for a more balanced discussion about polygynous relationships, located within an understanding of women’s lived experiences.

Care as Process: A Life-course Perspective on the Remaking of Ethics and Values of Care in Daiden, Papua New Guinea

ABSTRACTThis article addresses care as a socially, culturally, historically, and politically constituted ‘process’ and relates to ethnographic data gained during long-term anthropological fieldwork in Daiden, a place in the Lower Ramu River area of Papua New Guinea. It focuses in particular on the situation of elderly people as well as on intergenerational shifts. Analytically, the four dimensions of care (caring about, taking care of, care-giving, care-receiving) and their related values (attentiveness, responsibility, competence, responsiveness), as developed within the ‘ethics of care’ framework by feminist scholars are applied in order to delineate the remaking of local ethics of care in the face of wider contemporary societal transformations. By means of a ‘life-course perspective’ the article aims to shed light on the ways in which such a remaking has been perceived and evaluated in Daiden, thus augmenting the idea of care as a process rather than as a natural and/or atemporal disposition. The article also tackles pressing social welfare issues in contemporary Papua New Guinea in a more general way.

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.

MUSIC ARCHIVE FOR THE PACIFIC

The Music Archive for the Pacific has been established at Southern Cross University in Lismore, New South Wales, Australia, through the generous donation by Malcolm Philpott of approximately three hundred commercial recordings of mainly contemporary Papua New Guinean music, and other related printed materials.

Style and self‐making: String bag production in the Papua New Guinea Highlands

The looped netbag or bilum is one the most culturally significant of everyday objects in Papua New Guinea (PNG). Made exclusively by women, bilum are also iconic of female productive and reproductive labour. In this article, I analyze how growing social stratification is expressed through the types of bilums young women produce and wear. I argue that the choices that young women make about what kinds of designs, shapes, colours, and fashions to incorporate into their bilums can tell us a great deal about their desires, experiences, and imaginings. While previous analyses have focused on the bilum as an ambiguously gendered object expressing complex ideas about sexual difference, I argue that bilum style increasingly indexes complex ideas about geography and social location, materializing contemporary Papua New Guinean ‘imaginaries’ of space.

The Incorporated What Group: Ethnographic, Economic and Ideological Perspectives on Customary Land Ownership in Contemporary Papua New Guinea

Land law and economic development in Papua New Guinea, by David Lea and Timothy Curtin. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle, UK, 2011, 207pp. ISBN: 9-781443-826518. The incorporated land group (ILG), created by the Land Group Incorporation Act (1974) in Papua New Guinea, was one of a number of results of the 1971 Committee of Inquiry into Land Matters that convened in Papua New Guinea just before Papua New Guinea independence in 1975. It allowed for the legal incorporation of customary land-holding groups and was designed to promote business and cash-earning opportunities in rural Papua New Guinea in the post-independence period of nation- and citizen-building. In more recent times, the ILG however has been put under considerably more strain by being forced to acquire functions that were not envisioned by its architects in 1971—namely the receipt, distribution and investment of incomes from resource extraction projects. The ILGs set up by various resource projects (most significantly in the petroleum project areas of PNG) have all run into various and severe difficulties in meeting these requirements of resource income management and business development on a scale not ever anticipated in 1971. Using examples from Papua New Guinea's petroleum project area and elsewhere, I cast doubts on the capacities of contemporary indigenous landowning units to make incorporation work for them in the face of current organization and financial challenges.

Mobility, Violence and the Gendering of HIV in Papua New Guinea

The links between gender, sexuality and violence hold serious implications for HIV transmission and its social and economic effects. In Papua New Guinea, enduring and pervasive patterns of male sexual behaviour involving coercion, violence and gang rape are highly conducive to the transmission of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections and have a critical bearing on women's sexual autonomy and health. The realities of violence are intensified by the widespread view that women are responsible for the spread of the virus. This paper engages the theme of mobility to consider the fluid and dynamic character of gender relations and sexuality in contemporary Papua New Guinea, and to gain perspective on constructions of modern masculinity and the discursive representations of gender violence in the context of the escalating HIV epidemic.

Looking Like a Culture1

Across contemporary Papua New Guinea (PNG), concerns about culture, about possessing and appearing as a culture, are highly salient and contested. This is in part an outgrowth of commercial and state agencies promoting their products and policies through distinct images of PNG's myriad cultures. These agencies seek to incite forms of possession, as individual consumers and as national citizens. In a different but allied manner, concerns with appearing as a culture are part of long‐standing Melanesian coercive relations, where people seek to be recognised in publicly valued ways. The paper addresses the interactions between these modes of appearance across a range of examples from PNG ethnography to elucidate how contemporary PNG peoples make themselves up into different kinds of cultural ‘things’ that are displayed, mutually recognised and evaluated.

Nominating and managing a World Heritage Site in the highlands of Papua New Guinea

Kuk Swamp in the Upper Wahgi valley of Papua New Guinea is a site of early and independent agricultural development. The site is the first to be nominated by the government of Papua New Guinea for inclusion on the World Heritage List. The nomination of the Kuk Early Agricultural Site, as an organically evolved cultural landscape, is centred on traditional land management practices of Kawelka (a Meldpa-speaking group) landholders. The framework, challenges and problems of nominating and managing Kuk as a World Heritage Site in contemporary Papua New Guinea are discussed.

Rationales of Ownership: Transactions and Claims to Ownership in Contemporary Papua New Guinea (review)

Rationales of Ownership: Transactions and Claims to Ownership in Contemporary Papua New Guinea (review)

:Rationales of Ownership: Transactions and Claims to Ownership in Contemporary Papua New Guinea

Rationales of Ownership: Transactions and Claims to Ownership in Contemporary Papua New Guinea By Lawrence Kalinoe and James Leach. eds. Wantage. Sean Kingston Publishing. 2004.

From “Haus Tambaran” to Church: Continuity and Change in Contemporary Papua New Guinean Architecture

ABSTRACT This article examines contemporary Papua New Guinean architecture created in the oscillation between Melanesian culture and Western impact. Some of the country's indigenous buildings are truly remarkable, especially the prestigious structures known as “Haus Tambaran” in the Sepik River area which have lent inspiration to many outstanding samples of contemporary Papua New Guinean design. We have studied both the indigenous and contemporary architecture of the Sepik region in the field and in additional research in collaboration with the late Professor Wallace Ruff and are comparing and contrasting contemporary architectural design with indigenous buildings. Here, we focus on a church at Ambunti, East Sepik Province. There is no electricity available on the site to facilitate climate control. Moreover, this contemporary building serves Western political, social, religious and educational functions. At the same time, the church incorporates aspects of the country's architectural heritage, including aesthetics as well as site-design and design with climate. Our comparison contrasts the modern building's functions, aesthetics, and design solutions with the area's indigenous local equivalent, the Haus Tambaran, and reveals elements borrowed, left aside, or altered in the process of adaptation. Issues discussed here include historic precedent, aesthetics, ownership, gender, and other social issues, as well as design and construction. Formal aspects, their meanings and functions, as well as environmental considerations and design solutions are borrowed, translated, or transformed, recalling but also differing from “Green Architecture,” to serve contemporary Western needs.

Not Without a Cost: Contemporary PNG Art in the 21st Century

This article addresses the life experiences and work of two contemporary Papua New Guinean artists: Saun Anti from the artistically conservative Middle Sepik River area, and Wendi Choulai, from Melbourne, Australia. Anti's story of reprimand, censorship, and banishment, and Choulai's being the antithetical situation, illustrate some hurdles faced by contemporary PNG artists. Anti's and Choulai's art posed a challenge to their people's concept of traditional forms as well as to the preconceptions of collectors and curators. They are artists torn between two worlds: the world of “tradition,” reciprocity, and initiation, and the sophisticated, cosmopolitan world of the international artist.