This thesis examines the theme of order and entropy in the society, religion, and life of the Telefolmin people of Papua New Guinea, with an emphasis on the interpretation of secret rites and myths of the men's cult. Based on research in Telefolmin in 1974-5, the thesis draws upon the perspectives of Turner, Wagner, and Burridge. In the Telefol view order is a contingent construction which men maintain in the face of the world's drift toward entropy, corresponding to the concept of 'biniman' the process of dissipation and decay, 'becoming nothing'. The struggle against entropy informs several sectors of Telefol life, ranging from marriage practices to food tabus. A major strategy involves the segregation of antithetical acts and states, summarized in the polarization of nurturing and killing, which forms the major axis of the cult division between Taro (gardening, etc.) and Arrow (hunting, warfare, etc.). The anchoring point of the Telefol world is the men's cult house, which youths enter through a series of initiations. The rites are examined in detail, accompanied by an account of secret myths revealed in initiation. Analysis of the logic of secrecy shows that the multi-layered revelatory process illuminates principles of Telefol order while at the same time negating them. Thus the initiatory process highlights the dissonances of Telefol culture, calling "first principles" into question. This extends even to the notion that secret knowledge is capable of making reality transparent, a point underscored by the transcendental role of Magalim, a spirit embodying the notion of entropy. The thesis concludes by suggesting that Telefol religion comments on the possibilities of knowledge, men's hopes, the meaning of human action, and man's nature. Far from escaping life's ambiguities, men encounter them forcefully in Telefol religion. This implies that the anthropology of religion should be prepared to do no less. / Arts, Faculty of / Anthropology, Department of / Graduate

What constitutes a stable democracy has consistently changed over time, with varying thresholds of democratic achievement being utilized. The definitions of a liberal democracy have remained rather broad. This allows for states to be deemed democratic rather easily through weak characteristics. However, while some states clearly begin to exhibit illiberal democratic policies, therefore missing the democratic threshold, they are able to maintain stability. What the precise causal factors to democratic backslide are, have yet to be fully realized. Academics pose a multitude of characteristics contributing to backslide. This thesis seeks to examine two of those factors: ethnic heterogeneity and state “newness.” New approaches to measuring democracy and fostering democratic development are needed, however, they may also prove to be unsuccessful in analyzing democratic transitions. Not all states are alike, therefore what works for one state may not work for another, be the policies of the state liberal or illiberal.

This thesis offers an ethnographic study of everyday life in Nagovisi of Southwest Bougainville. The study focuses on aspects of how the Nagovisi construe social relations with a specific focus on vernacular categories and ideologies. The thesis deals with ideas about land, perceptions about the fluid nature of Nagovisi sociality, movement, and U-Vistract. The study is primarily based on thirteen months of field research I conducted in the Nagovisi between September 2011 and November of 2012. Through the exploration of the various thematic issues in the individual chapters the thesis offers a comparative scope for a tangential re-evaluation of the mine related crisis on the island. The focus on Noah Musinku and the Kingdom of Papala further illustrates this comparative scope by drawing an analogy between Panguna and U-Vistract and the complex entanglements and interrelationships between ideas relating to land, history, myth, relatedness, social unpredictability, and notions about wealth. It deals with the question of how persons, land and knowledge are mutually constitutive, and how each can affect the other as a result of history, and movement in time and space. By focusing on Nagovisi notions of the unpredictability of talk, knowledge, and the implication this bears on the nature of how people relate to each other and different places the thesis deals with what has long been proven a recalcitrant problem in PNG anthropological literature in which local life worlds are characterised by a fluidity of social forms.

The colonies of German New Guinea (GNG) and British New Guinea (BNG; from 1906 the Territory of Papua) experienced different paths of development due to the virtually opposite decisions made regarding commercial activities. The establishment of these colonies in the 19th century, and all of the major events and decisions relating to them up to 1914, were based on solely commercial motivations. This thesis examines the circumstances leading to the founding of GNG and BNG. It analyses the impact of government decisions and the growth of capitalist enterprises in East New Guinea during its first 30 years (1884–1914). This thesis argues that both the German and British governments were reluctant to become involved in colonisation. In the context of the political pressures prevailing in Berlin and London respectively, both governments succumbed but insisted that the cost of administering and developing the colonies was to be borne by others. The establishment costs of GNG were accepted by the Neu Guinea Compagnie (NGC) until 1899. It was a haphazard and experimental undertaking which was expensive financially and in human life. When the German government assumed administrative and financial control in 1899 the development of GNG had generally progressed in line with Chancellor Bismarck’s view that Germany’s colonies should be treated as economic enterprises. This was despite the bureaucratic form of government NGC had established. In contrast, there were claims that BNG was to be established on defence strategic requirements and to protect the indigenous Papuan population from non-British influences. This was fallacious posturing by the Australian colonies in order to attain control over the entire eastern sector of New Guinea and adjacent islands. The objective of the Queensland sugar planters was to procure cheap labour and for Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria to prevent the setting up of competitive agricultural industries. After Britain acquired southeast New Guinea, and the recruitment of Papuan and Melanesian labour into Australia had been outlawed, BNG was left to the gold prospectors, with no sustainable plantation industry taking place until Australia assumed administrative control over the Territory in 1907. Neither colony had any military significance. Both colonies shared a common European morality in administration. By 1914 GNG had become a commercially viable enterprise; BNG, now Papua, had failed to take advantage of the 1902–1912 boom in tropical produce. Given their similar size and geography, the economic performance of the two colonies should also have been similar. That this did not occur is beyond dispute. / Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of History and Politics, 2008

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Papua New Guinea. / Title from abstract screen (viewed May 24, 2004). Includes bibliographical references (p. 232-235).

Located amid tropical rainforest, in an upper tributary of the Sepik River, the Frieda River area is home to one of the biggest undeveloped gold and copper deposits in the Pacific. Exploration of Frieda's rich deposits has been ongoing since it began in 1969, bringing together unlikely partners in a process of preparing for a large-scale resource extraction project. This thesis offers an ethnographic account of stakeholder relations as they were unfolding at Frieda over forty years after the first company arrived on the banks of the River. It presents the key stakeholders of the Frieda River Project as outcomes of relations which produced them, emergent from an interplay between prescribed roles and expectations of responsibilities, and on the ground activities of forming and negotiating social relations. Through an ethnographic study of the Payamo it describes a process through which the Frieda River Project's local stakeholders mobilized a range of complex and contested relations to turn Frieda's rich deposits into development, and to make the mine at Frieda happen. This study provides an ethnographic insight into complex and contested processes of planning for a resource extraction project as they were actually taking place. It proposes an analytical framework of looking at a mine as a social relation and argues that although it might not yet have the appearance which would make it visible to the company and the government, from the perspective of its indigenous stakeholders the Frieda River Mine is already happening, but it has not yet revealed itself.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2003. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 367-396). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

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.

No description available.

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]