School of Social and Political Sciences - Research Publications
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ItemPolicy and the Papua New Guinea Liquefied Natural Gas pipeline(Elsevier, 2022-12-07)Pipelines constructed to carry oil or gas often cross the lands of people who find themselves low on the list of potential beneficiaries of the projects they are hosting. Where rights to benefit are acknowledged, it still may be difficult to confirm the legitimacy of claimants or to find an uncontested method to establish legitimacy. Local-level protests are not uncommon. This problem has been to the fore in Papua New Guinea [PNG]. It is illustrated by contrasting approaches to identifying landowners for the pipeline servicing the PNG Liquefied Natural Gas [LNG] project. We offer suggestions to minimize the likelihood that similar problems emerge with future LNG projects in PNG.
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ItemThe Beharell Patrol of 1938: The First Government Patrol Across the Land of Kubo People (Nomad District, Western Province, Papua New Guinea)(ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 2023-04-03)
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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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ItemNo Preview AvailableThe provenance of diagnostic specimens of the ‘New Guinea Singing Dog’(Queensland Museum, 2022)The New Guinea Singing Dog (NGSD) has been diagnosed as a distinct taxon on the basis of (1) two live animals, thought to be wild dogs, either free-living or captive, at the times when they were obtained by Europeans, (2) cranial material from 26 dogs, captive-bred descendants of the original pair, and (3) a single skull reportedly from a free-living wild dog. The NGSD is currently regarded as a behaviourally, morphologically and genetically distinct wild dog found at scattered high-altitude locations on mainland New Guinea, isolated from places where people live and, hence, largely isolated from village dogs associated with those people. We examined historical records to show that few, if any, of the founding members from the captive population of NGSDs, or dogs that served to diagnose Canis hallstromi Troughton, 1957, were, in fact, wild dogs or recent descendants of wild dogs. The continuing insistence that high altitude, wild-living NGSDs are a discrete population of dogs is incorrect. Rather, we recommend additional studies of village-living dogs across the span of altitudes and contend that these would yield much information about what was once a pan-New Guinean population of an unusual, and archaic, form of domestic dog.
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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.
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ItemOn Reading Patrol Reports – 3: Burnett River People(Taylor & Francis, 2020-01-01)Pre-independence patrols through remote areas of Papua and New Guinea were concerned both with mapping land and with identifying and counting those who lived there. People do not always stay in place, however, as colonial authorities envisioned, and patrols seeking to render them legible took different paths, at different times, through the same land. Reports from patrols to the vicinity of the Burnett River, which flows westwards from the Muller Range to the upper Strickland, used many different names when referring to groups of people who lived in that area. By cross-referencing between available reports, and supplementing interpretations with some post-independence information, we reach an improved understanding of the pre-independence distribution of people of different language groups. We direct particular attention to the role of interpreters in shaping the knowledge produced by patrol officers.