This thesis examines the Australia Army???s campaign on Papua from July 1942 to January 1943 with the focus on logistic support of the fighting arms and the relation of logistics to the tactics of tropical jungle warfare. It begins by examining the traditional approach to logistics in the military profession - the experience of Australian officers and forces in particular - from the First World War until May 1942, when the Australian territory of Papua was invaded. It establishes that the Army was poorly prepared because, as well as having never anticipated a prolonged land campaign in Papua-New Guinea, it lacked the logistic resources and knowledge of logistics as applicable to tropical jungle warfare. It then proceeds to examine the retreat over the Kokoda Track and the turning-point battles for Milne Bay and Imita Ridge. It demonstrates that the principal factor in the Australian retreat was logistic failure, as geography and lack of logistic resources prevented adequate supply of the fighting arms at least until lines of communication had been shortened; even then, difficulties remained. The thesis is rounded off by assessing the counter-attack across the territory of Papua for the capture of the enemy???s beachheads at Buna, Gona and Sanananda. It concludes that, as the island???s geography and tropical environment so dominated operations and since shortages of logistic equipment and units persisted, the Army could not perfect its logistic organisation by the end of this first phase of the New Guinea campaign. It fell back on improvisation and the fortitude of troops to triumph over the Japanese.

The neo-liberal policies of liberalization and deregulation, as utilized by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in its dealings with countries of the developing world, tend to facilitate the conditions for financial crisis. This can be traced by examining the economic crises of Mexico in 1982 and 1994/95, Asia in 1997 and Russia in 1998 and looking at the main causes and triggers of these crises. It is evident that the financial vulnerability that these countries suffered from existed due to, and not in spite of, these policy prescriptions. The IMF continues to present these policies as proven successes - a view that this dissertation contests. Further to this, the policies that the Fund uses are formulated for use in semi-peripheral economies and have little relationship to the actual economic environments of peripheral countries such as those of sub-Saharan Africa or Papua New Guinea. The ideology of free-markets and globalization is seen as unassailable by the IMF. By encouraging countries to remain part of the global financial system through debt rescheduling and open-markets policies, the IMF holds an increasingly fragile economic environment together. This dissertation formulates and tests four hypotheses in relation to Mexico, Asia, Russia and Papua New Guinea and the periphery. These are - (1) If there are periods of 'irrational exuberance' among investors in Third World debt, these are likely to contribute to debt crises. (2) If IMF policies are implemented in the Third World as dictated, then their primary benefits will accrue to the elites in those countries and in the developed world. (3) If Third World countries open their economies to foreign capital, then they are more likely to experience debt crises. (4) If IMF policies are implemented in peripheral countries, then they are even less likely to be successful than in semi-peripheral countries.

This thesis examines the Australia Army???s campaign on Papua from July 1942 to January 1943 with the focus on logistic support of the fighting arms and the relation of logistics to the tactics of tropical jungle warfare. It begins by examining the traditional approach to logistics in the military profession - the experience of Australian officers and forces in particular - from the First World War until May 1942, when the Australian territory of Papua was invaded. It establishes that the Army was poorly prepared because, as well as having never anticipated a prolonged land campaign in Papua-New Guinea, it lacked the logistic resources and knowledge of logistics as applicable to tropical jungle warfare. It then proceeds to examine the retreat over the Kokoda Track and the turning-point battles for Milne Bay and Imita Ridge. It demonstrates that the principal factor in the Australian retreat was logistic failure, as geography and lack of logistic resources prevented adequate supply of the fighting arms at least until lines of communication had been shortened; even then, difficulties remained. The thesis is rounded off by assessing the counter-attack across the territory of Papua for the capture of the enemy???s beachheads at Buna, Gona and Sanananda. It concludes that, as the island???s geography and tropical environment so dominated operations and since shortages of logistic equipment and units persisted, the Army could not perfect its logistic organisation by the end of this first phase of the New Guinea campaign. It fell back on improvisation and the fortitude of troops to triumph over the Japanese.

Research into the use of information by health care professionals has generally been conducted in countries dominated by the biomedical model. In these contexts, illness is considered to have a scientifically identifiable physical cause, and treatment practices within the formal health care sector are prescribed and managed in accordance with this definition. Yet there are also contexts where other belief systems inform and guide the way that people think about their health. In comparison to the biomedical model, these contexts have contributed very little to our understanding of how health professionals develop their knowledge. This research investigates how primary health care workers (PHCWs) in one such context, Papua New Guinea (PNG), develop their knowledge about the health services they provide. In order to discover and understand the differing views of these PHCWs, 69 semi-structured interviews were conducted in three culturally and geographically diverse regions of PNG. In explaining the diagnostic and treatment practices they use, these participants provided insights into not only how PHCWs engage with information but also how it informs their professional practice. These data were analysed, interpreted and discussed using a framework consisting of four, primary but interconnecting aspects: the context in which information was provided, the interactions with the sources of information, the processes by which information was understood, and the outcomes realized as a result of the information being used. Findings indicated that the majority of participants in this study acknowledged, if not incorporated, information pertaining to biomedicine, Christianity and Indigenous belief systems into their diagnostic and treatment practices. Even when these belief systems clearly contradicted each other, PHCWs did not in general feel the need to make a conscious choice between them. From their comments it would appear that four factors contributed to this ability to incorporate diverse and often conflicting ideas into the way that patients were cared for. First, all of the belief systems were considered legitimate by at least one group of people connected to the community in which the PHCW worked. Second, although varying in degrees of availability and accessibility, members of these groups were able to disseminate information pertaining to the belief system they supported. Third, the PHCW had no particular affiliation with any one of these groups but instead regularly interacted with a range of different people. Lastly, the PHCW worked in situations where health practices were not generally well supervised by their employers and therefore they were relatively free to choose between various diagnostic and treatment practices. The qualitative interpretive approach adopted in this thesis contributes to the field of human information behavior by affirming that conflict is in the eye of the beholder. When a number of belief systems coexist and all are considered legitimate, information about them is freely available, and the recipients actions are neither constrained by their own dogma, nor imposed upon by others, individuals may quite comfortably embrace diverse beliefs. These findings may also contribute to a better understanding of health management practices in developing countries by suggesting that health professionals are not merely personifications of a biomedical model. Instead, the study demonstrates that multiple belief systems can be combined by PHCWs, and that in turn this benefits the formal health care sector through increased treatment options that are both appropriate and effective in such circumstances.

This thesis describes certain areas in the grammar of the little-known Kuot language, spoken by some 1,500 people in New Ireland Province in Papua New Guinea. Kuot is an isolate, and is the only non-Austronesian (Papuan) language of that province. The analyses presented here are based on original data from 18 months of linguistic fieldwork. The first chapter provides an overview of Kuot grammar, and gives details of earlier mentions of the language, and of data collection and the fieldwork situation. The second chapter presents information about the prehistory and history of the area, the social system, kinship system and culture of Kuot speakers, as well as dialectal variation and prognosis of survival of the language. Chapter three treats Kuot phonology, with particular emphasis on the factors that govern allophonic variation, and on the expression of word stress and the functions of intonation. Word classes and the criteria used to define them are presented in Chapter four, which also contains a discussion of types of morphemes in Kuot. The last chapter describes in some detail the class of nouns in Kuot, their declensions, non-singular formation, and the properties of grammatical gender. Appendices give the full set of person-marking forms in Kuot, a transcription of a recorded text with interlinear glossing and translation, the Swadesh 100-word list for Kuot, and diagrams of kin relations and terminology / <p>För att köpa boken skicka en beställning till exp@ling.su.se/ To order the book send an e-mail to exp@ling.su.se</p>

No description available.

This research focussed on Fair Trade (FT) coffee supply chains in Papua New Guinea. Three research questions were asked. First, do small holders in the FT chains receive higher returns than the smallholders in the conventional chains? Secondly, if smallholders in the FT coffee chains receive higher returns from their coffee than the smallholders in the conventional chains, what are the sources of these higher returns? Finally, if smallholders in the FT chains don't receive higher returns than in the conventional chains, what are the constraints to smallholders receiving higher returns from the FT coffee chains than the conventional chains? A conceptual framework for agribusiness supply chain was developed that was used to guide the field work. A comparative case study methodology was selcted as an appropriate method for eliciting the required information. Four case study chains were selected. A paired FT and conventional coffee chains from Okapa and another paired FT and conventional chains from Kainantu districts, Eastern Highlands Province were selected for the study. The research found that smallholders in the FT chains and vonventional chains receive very similar prices for their coffee (parchment price equivalent). Hence, there was no evidence that smallholders in the FT chains received higher prices or returns from their coffee production than smallholders in conventional chains. This study also found that there was no evidence of FLO certification improving returns to smallholders in the FT chains over those returns received in the conventional chains, but the community that the FT smallholder producers come from did benefit. The sources of these community benefits lies in the shorter FT chains and the distributions of the margin that would have been otherwise made by processors to producers, exporters and the community. In addition, this study found that constraints associated with value creation are similar in all the four chains studies. However, there are some added hurdles for the FT chains in adhering to FT and organic coffee standards. Moreover, FT co-oeratives lacked capacity to trade and their only functions were to help with FLO certification and distribute the FT premium to the community. The findings of this research support some aspects of the literature, but not others. The research contribution is the finding that in this period of high conventional coffee prices, returns to smallholders from FT chains were no bettter than the returns gained in conventional chains, which leads to oppotunism and lack of loyalty by smallholders in the FT chains. The other contribution of this research is in identifying a particular type of free rider who is not a member of the FT co-operative but has right to the community benefits generated by the FT chain.

This thesis is concerned with the cultural shifts that have occurred in Lihir, Papua New Guinea, as Lihirians were drawn into greater engagement with the capitalist system, initially through the colonial labour trade and more recently through large-scale resource extraction. This research draws upon 15 months of fieldwork in the Lihir Islands from 2003 to 2004. This thesis is intended as a critical dialogue with world system theorists.World systems arguments are constructive for understanding how Lihirians have remained economically marginal.However, I reject the assertion commonly propounded in these approaches that the world capitalist system inevitably destroys ‘traditional’ cultures and remakes them to its own specifications. Working from Sahlins’ (1985, 1992) premise that there is always continuity in change, I have sought to illustrate those enduring structures and received cultural values that have shaped Lihirian engagement with the capitalist system. My concern iswith articulation rather than penetration; to capture the dialectic of global structural inequalities and Lihirian selective appropriation. This approach allows me to emphasise the heterogeneity of Lihirian culture, notonly prior to sustained European contact, or even mining activities, but specifically at the height of their engagement with the capitalist system. (For complete abstract open document)

The thesis describes diversity of birds along a complete altitudinal gradient and in forest fragments in lowlands of Papua New Guinea. It focuses separately on the diversity of different feeding guilds, and discusses their links to habitat and food resources. More specifically, it focuses on forest insectivorous birds, their predation pressure on arthropods, feeding specializations and preferences, and some of the ways how insectivores search for food.