School of Social and Political Sciences - Research Publications
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ItemCorrection To: God and the Virus in Papua New Guinea: Outsourcing Risk, Living with Uncertainty and (Re)creating a Niupela Pasin(Springer Nature Singapore, 2021)In Papua New Guinea COVID-19 has been experienced in various ways. The public statements of Prime Minister James Marape evolved within his strategy of outsourcing the country’s response and risk from the virus to God. In a remote area of Western Province, people learned that western science could not cure COVID-19, while their Christian beliefs were challenged by the re-appearance of practices that purported to identify sorcerers who might harness the power of the virus. Some people in East New Britain Province revived the use of shell money. Confronted by collapsing certainties, local people resurrected the past as a means of creating an apparently ‘new normal’. Living with uncertainty, people sought a knowable future, grappling with issues of trust and authority, and resuscitating older truths and practices.
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ItemA 19th Century New Ireland Dog, Canis familiaris novaehiberniae Lesson, 1827 and the Status of Canis hallstromi Troughton, 1957(Australian Museum, 2021-11-10)Recent literature has usually invoked the name Canis hallstromi Troughton, 1957, though with varied taxonomic interpretations, when writing of dogs thought to be unique to New Guinea. The name Canis familiaris novaehiberniae was proposed for dogs from the New Guinea region 130 years before Troughton published Canis hallstromi but has been overlooked in the recent literature, as has Canis familiaris papuensis Ramsay, 1879 from southeastern New Guinea. The taxonomic status of New Guinea dogs remains controversial but if dogs from New Guinea and New Ireland represent a single heterogeneous gene pool, then C. hallstromi Troughton and C. familiaris papuensis Ramsay would be junior subjective synonyms of C. familiaris novaehiberniae Lesson, 1827. Recent studies of New Guinea dogs are weakened by their failure to attend carefully to the history of discovery and nomenclature of these animals.
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ItemThe waterfall at the end of the world: Earthquakes, entropy and explanation(Duke University Press, 2021)In February 2018, a magnitude 7.5 earthquake had devastating consequences for thousands of people living in remote mountainous areas of Papua New Guinea. As the physical world around them collapsed and decayed, many sought to understand what had happened within ontological frames grounded in science and Christianity. Both these speak of decay in physical or moral order, and an inexorable end that is without human cause. The ultimate effect of these new schemas negated the possibility that earthquake-affected local people might view themselves as agents of cause and control with respect to natural disasters, contrasting profoundly with traditional beliefs and practices.
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ItemGod and the Virus in Papua New Guinea: Outsourcing Risk, Living with Uncertainty and (Re)creating a Niupela Pasin(Palgrave Macmillan, 2021)In Papua New Guinea COVID-19 has been experienced in various ways. The public statements of Prime Minister James Marape evolved within his strategy of outsourcing the country’s response to and risk from the virus to God. In a remote area of Western Province, people learned that western science could not cure COVID-19, while their Christian beliefs were challenged by the re-appearance of practices that purported to identify sorcerers who might harness the power of the virus. Some people in East New Britain Province revived the use of shell money. Confronted by collapsing certainties, local people resurrected the past as a means of creating an apparently ‘new normal’. Living with uncertainty, people sought a knowable future, grappling with issues of trust and authority, and resuscitating older truths and practices.
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Item"We Are Fire Clan': Groups, Names and Identity in Papua New Guinea(Wiley, 2018-03-01)This paper draws on two case studies concerning Kubo and Febi people of Western Province, Papua New Guinea, to reveal, first, ways in which people present themselves to the state as groups that qualify as legitimate beneficiaries of financial benefits expected to flow from extraction of natural gas on or near their land and, second, simultaneously present themselves to their immediate neighbours in ways intended to either lay claim to particular areas of land or offset possible challenges to their asserted rights to land. To achieve these ends, people strategically employ names to variously connote or denote particular assemblages of people.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableAfter the earthquake: Edolo people and their gardens in rainforest(Berghahn Books Online, 2021-06-21)In a previous post to EnviroSociety we described the immediate impacts of a huge earthquake on Edolo people of Papua New Guinea. At the time we wrote, the people were in desperate straits, with minimal access to government services and reliant on support from several mission-connected NGOs. In this sequel, three years later, we write of ways in which the people themselves have been re-establishing a hold on what had been, and in places still remains, a shattered landscape.
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ItemRelationship between wild-living and village-living dogs in New Guinea(Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2021-03-23)
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ItemCOVID-19 and Facebook in Papua New Guinea: Fly River Forum(Wiley Open Access, 2020-01-01)This article examines use of a Papua New Guinea (PNG) Facebook group, Fly River Forum, with reference to the COVID‐19 global pandemic. From about mid‐March 2020, when the PNG Government declared a State of Emergency, to early May, members of that forum shared an intense interest in the pandemic and were deeply concerned with its possible implications for the country. The great majority of COVID‐related posts, and associated comments, combined delivery of relevant information with scepticism about some of that information. Most participants did not take either religious tropes or conspiracy theories as primary sources of comfort or explanation. We argue that Fly River Forum played a positive role in the ways that people engaged with what could have emerged as a health disaster. More generally, geographically focused sites such as this provide a valuable barometer of local opinion and deserve close attention by politicians and policymakers in PNG.
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ItemCaptain Everill's Error: Mapping the Upper Strickland River in Papua and New Guinea, 1885-1979(ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 2018)An error dating from 1885 in mapping the upper Strickland River, Papua New Guinea, was reinforced and extended by government officer Charles Karius in 1929 when reporting results from a lengthy exploratory patrol. Detailed maps produced by the US Army and the Royal Australian Survey Corps in, respectively, 1942 and 1966 perpetuated these errors. It was not until 1979, with release of a series of 1:100,000 topographic maps, that long-standing errors were finally put to rest. Throughout these years, the contributions of well-informed people tended to be ignored in favour of the opinions of those whose status implied authority.