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Here I offer a challenge to some of the theoretical truisms that have developed concerning gift exchange, which has been a topic of scholarly debate for almost a century. Much discussion has focussed on how giving creates obligations and increases the power of the giver. Taking the case of the Lelet of New Ireland, Papua New Guinea, I examine how people use magic to usurp the agency of the giver, thus forcing them to give through 'coercive exchange'. Magic, I argue, has the capacity to upend how obligation is understood to operate. People give, not because of the customary social obligation, but because magic has been used to extract their wealth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I explore the view that efficacy in Pentecostal healing depends on confidence, or unwavering belief. My focus is on emic notions of failure – how people explain failures of therapy in their own terms – rather than on failures in the procedure employed or the inadequacies of the healer. Although anthropologists have criticised the notion of belief, my ethnographic example suggests that it remains useful, particularly since in this case it is central to the assessment of failure. The Pentecostals discussed here see belief in a more material way, as embodied and intimately bound up with the reformative project of becoming a born again Christian. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the wealth flowing from a large new liquefied natural gas extraction project, Hela Province has undergone immense socio-cultural changes. Many of these changes are well documented, but those pertaining to gender and sexuality have largely been overlooked. Our research used photovoice and interviews to examine how the local sexual economy has been affected by money flowing from the project. This methodology allowed the participants to creatively visualise and document their lived experience of the changes occurring. The research findings illustrate the complex and diverse ways in which one instance of resource extraction is impacting on people at the margins of large-scale developments and how this is shaping both gender relations and sexual relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many male coffee farmers in the highlands of Papua New Guinea believe they have a right to sex with their spouse without regard to her wishes. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative data, I argue that such sexual violence is best framed within local understandings of what marriage involves – an implicit contract which conveys rights and responsibilities to each partner in a marriage. Changes brought by modernity are transforming traditional understandings of conjugality, causing some discrepancies in partners' understanding of what they have agreed to. Too many women continue to endure marital rape, but some signs of improvement are discernible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a study of love magic, this paper examines the ways in which sexual desire is culturally mediated among the Lelet of New Ireland, Papua New Guinea. The Lelet regulate sexuality heavily through what Foucault refers to as 'prescriptive discourses' which severely constrain expressions of sexuality, especially for women, who are construed as properly lacking sexual desire. While women are readily the object of men's desire, men are not readily the object of women's desire. Despite passionlessness being the ideal for women, men turn to love magic as a means of cultivating sexual desire in them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like other Pentecostals, the Lelet of central New Ireland, Papua New Guinea, are urged to reject significant aspects of their cultural tradition in order to become born‐again Christians. Most Lelet Pentecostals say that all use of magic must be abandoned. I use the example of healing to show how commitments to break with the past are influenced by life's exigencies, such as illness. Pragmatic responses to illness may see people move between forms of therapy that are considered mutually exclusive – that is, between Christian healing and magic. Some judge this wavering derisively as "yo‐yo" thinking. I suggest that a more subtle and open‐minded appreciation of the Pentecostal stress on breaking with the past is to see this as situational – that is, as necessarily influenced by contingencies. Despite the rhetoric of absolute rupture being widely proclaimed, putting this into practice while negotiating the exigencies of life is a decidedly more complex and fluid matter. Lelet pragmatism sometimes stands in the way of the radical idealism of Pentecostalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on qualitative research in Jiwaka Province, in the highlands of Papua New Guinea (PNG), to examine the changing nature of marriage in that context. In particular, it examines how changes in the practice of brideprice have been associated with an increase in intimate partner violence. Violence, a relational process, is to be understood in the context of the customary unequal power relations between men and women. It is argued that men in the highlands of PNG see any gain in power for women as a loss for themselves, and so actively resist it. Men who see their power over women challenged resort to the discourse of brideprice, arguing that the payment of brideprice gives them absolute authority over wives. A good understanding of the norms that sanction violence is a vital step in developing interventions to prevent violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines Methodist missionary discourse in Papua at the turn of the nineteenth century, locating two themes: what I call a pathology of desire, to be found in the polemical missionary discourses directed at sexuality, immorality and licentiousness, and a pathology of culture, to be found in their polemical discourses against abortion, infanticide and child-rearing practices. Together, these pathologies were seen as the main causes of population decline. The two discourses, constantly at play, produce a doubled image of Papuan women - the fallen woman and the bad mother - which, it was considered, necessitated the intervention of “a civilising mission.” This involved race rescue - the isolation of those thought vulnerable (children and young women) on the mission station, away from the dangers of the villages, at the same time instilling in them their own notions of sexual morality, and above all the training of Papuan women in European models of motherhood and domesticity, so they would become good wives and mothers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The basic premise of this paper is that oppressive and violent behaviour is not an essential aspect of the male identity. Seeking to comprehend the underlying causes of violence, specifically against women but also more generally, this paper examines some of the alternative ways of being a man that have accompanied Christianity. Through observation of some Pentecostals from New Ireland, I have concluded that new ways of being a man that are less oppressive and dominating for women are emerging. This phenomenon I argue is a step towards gender equality, since it involves creating more caring and equitable relationships and a step towards reducing violence both against women and in the community, since it embraces non-violent ways of being a man. Particularly useful in analysing the process of reforming men is Foucault's work on governmentality since it relates well to the Pentecostal emphasis on radical change in being 'born again'. Conversion for born-again Christians is more than simply abandoning sin; rather it involves the creation of a new self and becoming a new person. Similarly, Foucault argues that the individual practises the art of self-governance in re-forming her or himself as she or he desires. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recognition that HIV prevention materials need to be adapted to local cultures is not often sufficiently understood and applied. Counter discourses and determined disputation about the best means of HIV prevention show that success is not simply a matter of mindfully translating globally sanctioned knowledge and presenting it to receptive audiences. Beliefs contrary to global AIDS knowledges will not be displaced inevitably by scientific facts. As this study of born-again Christians in Papua New Guinea shows, there is incommensurability between the globalized approach preferred by the government and the approach of these Christians. The answer may lie in two words: respect and dialogue. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The intensifying global spread of apocalyptic forms of Christianity, now well established in Papua New Guinea, has popularised readings of the Bible that stress a cataclysmic end of the world from which only the faithful will be saved. This paper examines the way that this apocalyptic discourse is being embraced by the Lelet of central New Ireland, taking the case of an earthquake that occurred during the year 2000. Apocalypticism is increasingly the operative explanatory framework for unusual events that are seen as signs. However, recourse to it varies between individuals. Signs are very carefully examined and various theories, new and old, are considered before an explanation is finally accepted. I argue that the acceptance of new beliefs does not always depend on the existence of prior similar beliefs, and neither are older beliefs simply displaced by the new. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following Marcel Mauss, who argued that the way people move and position their bodies is socially learned and culturally specific, I examine the ways that bodies move in one particular culture in Papua New Guinea, namely the Lelet. I extend Mauss' insights by drawing on the work of Judith Butler, who suggests that gender is a performance rather than instinctive. Looking at the kinds of actions Lelet women perform, I argue that these play an important part in constituting them as gendered beings. Lelet women's bodily movements, comportments and dispositions are heavily circumscribed by conventions that define what sorts of movements are appropriate to their gender. This process of engendering is quintessentially about power and shows how particular forms of power produce particular subjects. Although these gender conventions are sometimes enforced by punitive means, women largely come to embody them as a process of self-government. Although the Christian church has upheld such conventions in the past, the Pentecostal Christianity the Lelet now practice has produced departures from them, which I analyse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes up the call by scholars such as Alfred Gell to consider objects of material culture as objects, by examining them in the context of production, circulation and reception. Because they are unadorned and without visual interest, langarol, the hand-held artefacts used in some New Ireland dance performances, do not lend themselves to modes of analysis that see cultural objects as surrogate texts, the hidden meanings of which can be 'read'. This very 'lack' enables us more readily to discern their significance, which lies in their magical potency and in the performance of their creator, the shaman, in attracting, wielding and revealing his awesome power. The power sought is less power over others and more power to - the ability to realise projects that can elicit effects. If consciousness and body are one, such achievements are to be understood as embodiments of intentionality and agency. It is through the production and wielding of such objects that people make themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To counter an ahistorical emphasis on 'malangan' in studies of New Ireland culture, this paper examines the historical emergence, among the Lelet people, of new cultural forms. My example is the dramatic new kinds of dance and associated magic that have been acquired from other parts of Papua New Guinea. These importations have changed people's perception of the world in which they make their lives. I argue that part of the appeal of these new cultural forms is that they open the door to new more potent forms of power, allowing the Lelet to widen their capacity to act as agents in the enlarged regional arena and power networks of the colonial and post-colonial context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the relationship between money, the nation, and new imaginings of apocalypticism in Papua New Guinea. Robert Foster has argued that money played an important role in the Australian administration's efforts to promote a sense of nation at the end of the colonial period. I explore the effects of the new imaginings beyond the nation that are occurring as Christian apocalypticism becomes a dominant framework for interpreting the world. New meanings and values are being attached to money, resulting in the destabilization of the strong link between money and nation that was observed by Foster. I argue that, within this new world-view, money is losing its symbolic potency, that new forms of identity are emerging, and that people's attachment to the nation is being weakened. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been little research into how the diverse cultures within Papua New Guinea interpret, represent and understand the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Using qualitative ethnographic research, this study examines how incoming ideas about AIDS relate to the existing cultural frameworks of a rural Christian community. Although L, elet respondents in New Ireland have recourse to indigenous conceptions, apocalyptic Christianity is the most influential framework in their understanding of AIDS. Two interconnected issues are examined: how the epidemic is understood in apocalyptic terms, and how this affects practical approach to the disease. The paper indicates a need for more research into the stances taken by different Christian groups towards HIV/AIDS. This is especially important in the Pacific, where Christianity is the dominant worldview and where there has been a rapid spread of apocalyptic forms of Christianity, which may have particularly significant consequences for the epidemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the globalisation and apocalypticism interact in Central New Ireland, Papua New Guinea. Concepts and beliefs of premillennialist Pentecostal Christianity; Effect of the 1997 to 1998 drought on the country; Creation of an innovative world geography as an interconnected entity.

This article examines the widely reported phenomenon of the efflorescence of magical beliefs and practices, often explained as a response by some societies to their incorporation into the cash and market economy. Rather than accepting this view that the phenomenon is a generalizable response to modernity, I seek to understand it in its own terms as a singular response to the introduction of new forms of wealth into a specific cultural framework. Taking the example of a particular society, the Lelet of Papua New Guinea, I show how the expansion of forms of wealth has led to a loss of control over the processes by which sociality was previously regulated. This discussion proceeds through consideration of Lelet management of valuables and desire, and the importance of visuality in this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explores the connection between the body and memory for the people of the Lelet Plateau of central New Ireland in Papua New Guinea. Study's focus on the mortuary feasts of the Lelet people; Forms of sorcery which target the participants' bodies; analysis of mnemonic processes.

Explores aspects of bodily belief and embodiment among believers of shamanism in the Lelet plateau of central New Ireland (Papua New Guinea). Food, eating and the body in Melanesia; Cult of Buai and the incorporation of power; Sorcery and the sorcerer's paraphernalia.

Explores the emergence of Victorian ideas and practices concerning corporeality and character, and their deployment in colonial evangelism in the Pacific Ocean. Reference to the text of Methodist missions to Papua and New Guinea; Ways in which metropolitan disciplinary regimes intersect with locally specific discourses and practices; Poetics of civilizing missions and visible bodies.

This paper is based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork among the Lelet of New Ireland Province, Papua New Guinea. It draws on qualitative interviews with Pentecostal Christians intended to examine their understanding of Christianity and how this relates to their cultural practices – in this case, how their Pentecostalism affects their therapeutic beliefs and practices. The frequent observation that therapeutic repertoires are becoming less discrete is substantiated by the Lelet case, for in their search for therapy, the Lelet often cross the borders of different repertoires, seeing no contradiction, for example, between combining a vernacular therapy with biomedicine. With the advent of Pentecostalism, the issue has become far more complex. The Lelet therapeutic culture remains pluralist, but the research shows that Lelet Pentecostals are increasingly viewing their own Christian-based forms of healing as in competition with other therapies, especially vernacular therapies. This competitive outlook has brought a demonization of vernacular therapies, which are labelled 'satanic' and their use discouraged. In fact, Pentecostalism is refashioning the realm of therapy: rather than border crossing and mixing of therapeutic repertoires, the situation is increasingly dominated by notions of mutual exclusivity. In order to comprehend the full complexity of medical pluralism, it is now necessary not only to examine how the borders of the different therapeutic repertoires are blurred, destabilized or reconfigured but also how they may be demarcated and policed. In other words, we argue that medical pluralism is being eroded by its interaction with Pentecostalism. • Healing is an important aspect of Pentecostal Christian practice in Papua New Guinea. • Pentecostals see their forms of healing as in competition with other therapies. • Pentecostals seek to regulate the borders of their therapeutic repertoire. • The rejection of vernacular therapies is a marker of born-again Christian identity. • Biomedicine is increasingly seen in mutually exclusive terms by Pentecostals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]