This thesis explores the part gambling plays in an urban setting in Highland Papua New Guinea. Gambling did not exist in (what is now) Goroka Town before European contact, nor Papua New Guinea more broadly, but when I conducted fieldwork in 2009-2010 it was an inescapable part of everyday life. One card game proliferated into a multitude of games for different situations and participants, and was supplemented with slot machines, sports betting, darts, and bingo and lottery games. One could well imagine gambling becoming popular in societies new to it, especially coming on the back of money, wage-work and towns. Yet the popularity of gambling in the region is surprising to social scientists because the peoples now so enamoured by gambling are famous for their love of competitively giving things away, not competing for them. Gambling spread while gifting remained a central part of the way people did transactions. This thesis resists juxtaposing gifting and selfish acquisition. It shows how their opposition is false; that gambling is instead a new analytic technique for manipulating the value of gifts and acquisitions alike, through the medium of money. Too often gambling takes a familiar form in analyses: as the sharp end of capitalism, or the benign, chance-led redistributor of wealth in egalitarian societies. The thesis builds an ethnographic understanding of gambling, and uses it to interrogate theories of gambling, money, and Melanesian anthropology. In so doing, the thesis speaks to a trend in Melanesian anthropology to debate whether monetisation and urbanisation has brought about a radical split in peoples' understandings of the world. Dealing with some of the most starkly ‘modern' material I find a process of inclusive indigenous materialism that consumes the old and the new alike, turning them into a model for action in a dynamic money-led world.

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The purpose of this thesis is to examine the effect that the Catholic Diocese of Aitape in the Sandaun Province of Papua New Guinea, and by implication, the Catholic Church, has had on the lives of women, as assessed by women of the Diocese themselves. Much research has been done into how women can be, and/or become, empowered through development project approaches and through the agency of development agencies and people. Many such projects have been relatively short lived and have also been sector specific. If such projects are seen to have an impact upon the lives of women, a long standing institution such as the Catholic Diocese of Aitape which has such a great influence on the lives of the people living within the Diocese could also be expected to have an impact upon the lives of women. Women reflecting upon their own lives and the lives of their mothers and grandmothers and what differences there are and how the Diocese/Church has contributed to these changes has provided the data for analysis within this thesis. Based upon the reflections of women, selected as being representative of the women of the Diocese, the Diocese and the Catholic Church have indeed contributed to a degree of empowerment for women that these women may not have otherwise achieved within contemporary Papua New Guinea society. The various teaching, policies and practices of the Diocese and the Church have enabled a greater freedom of association, movement and opportunity for women to individually and collectively become empowered to some degree. The patriarchal nature of the Church hierarchy and the interaction between the Church and the Diocese however remains a barrier to true gender equality across all aspects of the Diocese and Church. While this remains so, increasing localisation of the Church within Melanesian society may well mean that gains made by women through the agency of the Catholic Diocese of Aitape, need to be defended from erosion by a more Melanesian version of that same Diocese. [Appendix 4 : STK THR 262.3093 D718]

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Thesis (PhD) -- University of Western Sydney, Nepean, 1998. / Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (1998), School of Employment Relations, University of Western Sydney, Nepean. Bibliography : p. 232-257.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Melbourne, School of Anthropology, Geography and Environmental Studies, 2007. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 357-389).

Thesis (M.M.S.)--Victoria University of Wellington, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references.

Culture Change in a Local Cultures of Papua New Guinea Author: Julie Grúzová Abstract The subject of this dissertation is the study of the local Nungon community living in Papua New Guinea. It focuses mainly on those sociocultural changes, which occurred as a result of the environmental protection in this area, and on their impacts on the cultural identity of the local inhabitants. Special attention is devoted to the study of visualization and representation of culture, nature, biodiversity protection, social and cultural changes and the future of the community. A partial objective is also to present ethnographic data and facts about the local Nungon community. A range of methods has been employed in the effort to fulfil the set objectives; the work is based on field research in the observed local community and on the techniques associated with it. The specific technique used to study cultural identity is a native drawing which was used to analyze cultural representations and visualizations of culture. Analyses of native drawings enable uncover a native understanding of the phenomenon of biodiversity conservation and related cultural changes. The thesis represents a unique visual material, which served as the basis for the analysis and interpretation of the sociocultural changes that are taking place in the...

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The present study investigates the gender systems of 20 languages in the New Guinea region, an often overlooked area in typological research. The languages were classified with five criteria used by Di Garbo (2014) to classify gender systems of African languages. The results showed that the gender systems were diverse, although around half of the languages have two-gendered sex-based systems with semantic assignment, more than four gender-indexing targets, and no gender marking on nouns. The gender systems of New Guinea are remarkably representative of the world, although formal assignment is much less common. However, the gender systems of New Guinea and Africa are very different. The most significant difference isthe prevalence of non-sex-based gender systems and gender marking on nouns in Africa, whereas the opposite is true in New Guinea. However, gender in Africa is also less diverse largely due to the numerous Bantu languages. Finally, four typologically rare characteristics were found in the sample: (1) size and shape as important criteria of gender assignment, with large/long being masculine and small/short feminine, (2) the presence of two separate nominal classification systems, (3) no gender distinctions in pronouns, and (4) verbs as the most common indexing target. / Denna studie undersöker genussystemen hos 20 språk i Nya Guinea-regionen, vilken ofta förbises i typologisk forskning. Språken klassificerades utifrån fem kriterier som användes av Di Garbo (2014) för att klassificera genussystem i Afrika. Resultaten visade att genussystemen var varierade, men ungefär hälften av språken har könsbaserade genussystem med tvaå genus, semantisk genustilldelning, fler än fyra genusindex och ingen genusmarkering på substantiv. Genussystemen är anmärkningsvärt representativa för världen, men formell genustilldelning är mycket mindre vanlig. Jämfört med genussystemen i Afrika är dock Nya Guinea väldigt annorlunda. Den viktigaste skillnaden är den större utbredningen av icke-könsbaserade genussystem och genusmarkering på substantiv i Afrika, medan motsatsen gäller i Nya Guinea. Genus i Afrika är dock till stor del mindre varierat på grund av de talrika bantuspråken. Slutligen hittades fyra typologiskt sällsynta karaktärsdrag i urvalet: (1) storlek och form som viktiga kriterier för genustilldelning, där stort/långt är maskulint och litet/kort feminint, (2) närvaron av två separata nominalklassificeringssystem, (3) inga genusdistinktioner i pronomen och (4) verb som det vanligaste genusindexet.