ethnographic representation - along the ok tedi · pdf fileethnographic representation in the...

ETHNOGRAPHIC REPRESENTATIONIN THE

SHADOWS OF DEVELOPMENT

Review essayThe People of Lake Kutubu and Kikori:

Changing Meanings of Daily LifeMARK BUSSE, NICK ARAHO, AND SUSAN TURNER

Stuart Kirsch

In recent years, Papua New Guinea's remote hinter-lands have become the site of numerous logging projects,copper and gold mines, and exploration patrols bypetroleum and natural gas companies. These develop-ments have profound consequences for how anthro-pologists do ethnography in the region, for they affectthe political and economic significance of our work.

The People of Lake Kutubu and Kikori: ChangingMeanings of Daily Life (1993, Papua New GuineaNational Museum and Art Gallery. Distributed byUniversity of Hawaii Press. 81pp. ISBN 9980-85-512-6) describes in photographs and text the societies of theSouthern Highlands and the Gulf Coast of Papua NewGuinea affected by the Kutubu Oil project operated byChevron Niugini. The volume is the result of collabo-ration between cultural anthropologist Mark Busse,Papua New Guinean archaeologist Nick Araho, andphotographer Susan Turner. Busse and Turner spentseveral months in the area during the construction phaseof the project, from 1991 -92. The book was publishedby the Papua New Guinea National Museum withfinancial support from the Kutubu Joint Venture, and isdistributed by the University of Hawaii Press. Writtenfor a general audience, the text provides a clear andaccessible ethnographic and historical overview of theregion, while the vivid photographs bring the placesand people to life. The emphasis on everyday life is a

welcome alternative to the attention given to ritual inmost popular accounts of Melanesia.

Perhaps because of their intended audience, how-ever, the authors do not fully consider the implicationsof conducting ethnographic research in the shadows ofa large-scale resource development project. The pres-ence of the Kutubu Oil project influences the coverageof societies in the text and photos, as well as the book'sargument. Yet the authors only address the impact ofthe development project indirectly, by focusing onculture change. As a result, the book raises questionsabout anthropological responsibilities and the politicsof representation that it does not answer. These are theissues I wish to consider in the discussion that follows.I begin by contrasting The People of Lake Kutubu andKikori with popular depictions of Melanesian ritual.Next I compare the text with other works that examinethe local contexts of development projects in PapuaNew Guinea. Finally, I discuss the political dimensionsof accounts about cultural difference.

VIEWING PAPUA NEW GUINEA

Several years ago I was asked to curate an exhibition ofcolor photographs which had been shot by a talentedamateur photographer who had visited the central high-lands of Papua New Guinea.1 The majority of the

96 Volume 12 Number 2 Fall/Winter 1996/1997 Visual Anthropology Review

Figure 1 Foi man with cassowary headdress preparing to dance. Reprinted, by permission, from ThePeople of Lake Kutubu and Kikori, p. 74. Photograph by Susan Turner. 1993 © by the Trustees of thePapua New Guinea National Museum.

images were taken at the "Highlands Show" in MountHagen, where groups of people from around the coun-try gather to perform "traditional" dances in front oflarge audiences composed of both Papua New Guineansand tourists (Wright 1983). A critic from The Philadel-phia Inquirer wrote that the photographs in the exhibi-tion depicted Tierce-looking men, bare-breasted womenand doe-eyed children—all transformed by beads, hair,feathers, bone and paint into creatures both strange andwonderful" (Klein 1992). What attracted my attentionin the photographs, in contrast, was what the photogra-pher had deliberately excluded from view. Nearly all ofthe photos were close-ups of people with few signs ofthe context visible. There were no booths sellingsausages or snow cones, no banners advertising Gorokacoffee or the Yellow Pages, and no buses waiting toferry exotically-attired dancers to their hotel or theairport. In short, the photographs in the exhibitionrepresented Papua New Guinea as a "timeless" place

(see Fabian 1983), distancing viewers from the peoplebeing photographed. That performances at the High-lands Show were "traditional" would be taken at facevalue by people looking at the photographs unless thecontext of the pictures was written back into the exhi-bition.

The Highlands Show, like comparable events else-where in Papua New Guinea (see Figure 2), is held at afairground that is fenced to keep spectators at bay. Atthe center of the dancing ground, dance troupes com-pete for cash prizes in a dizzying display ofmulticulturalism. Introduced by colonial authorities,the dance competitions were proposed as a substitutetor exchange rivalries and warfare in the highlands.J

Today, photographs of the winners are prominentlydisplayed in newspapers and shop windows.

The costumes and dances at these performancescome from a great variety of otherwise incompatiblecontexts: women in mourning attire stand alongside

Visual Anthropology Review Volume 12 Number 2 Fall/Winter 19961997 97

Figure 2. Dance Group from Mekeo at the 1986 Moresby Show, Port Moresby, PapuaNew Guinea. Photograph by Stuart Kirsch.

men in battlefield formation, while other groups dressas if attending an exchange ceremony between clans.These events, civic productions lasting for se\ oral da\sare referred to as sing-sings, the Tok Pisin catch-all for"any festival implying dancing" (Mihalic 1971:174).To the naive outsider, the pidgin label invests this'invented tradition '(Hobsbawm 1983) with an aura of

continuity and authenticity that is thoroughly mislead-ing.

Such performances actually mark a shift fromcommunity participation in ritual to the performance ofritual for an audience composed largely of outsiders,who lack the local knowledge necessary for its interpre-tation (see Gewertz and Errington 1991:58-100). Thecostumes acquire new meanings through their incorpo-ration into these performances, gradually leading to theformation of a national 'canon' of tribal costumes anddances. The Huli 'wigmen" of the Southern High-lands, for example, are well-known for their crescent-shaped headdresses of human hair, once the exclusiveattire of initiated men, and forpaintin their faces withvivid red and blue tempera paint. Women from Mendiare renowned for attending the Highlands Show andsimilar performances dressed as if in mourning, cover-ing their bodies with gray clay and draping multiplestrings of Job's tears over their shoulders. In the newcontext, theircostumes no longersignify ritual status or

grief, but have instead become markers of 'Huli" and"Mendi identity. Outside of Papua New Guinea, thecostumes take on new meanings, coming to stand fornational distinctiveness, rather than local or regionalaffiliation. The oversized masks worn by Asaro'mudmen' have been featured in advertisements, filmsand album covers, where they are intended to representa generic 'primitiveness," even though the current formof their popular costume was created for the HighlandsShow (Otto and Verloop 1996).

In this way, Pacific peoples objectify their owntraditions, turning culture into a "thing" that they canreflect upon, commodify, and use to represent them-selves to others. This phenomenon has been discussedextensively in the anthropological literature on the"politics of culture" (e.g , Babadzan 1988, Keesing1989, Linnekin 1992, although see Trask 1991). Thespread of capitalism into the margins of the worldsystem, along with the reconfiguration of the post-colonial landscape and the proliferation of indigenous,ethnic, and nationalist political movements, have madethis a global trend rather than a process exclusive to thePacific Islands ( e g , Handler 1988, Stephens 1995).Thus throughout the Pacific, as elsewhere, what ap-pears to be traditional may very well be a reaction tochange and modernity.


The photographs of Papua New Guinea that appearin coffee table books, postcards, calendars, magazines,and travel brochures are dominated by decontextualizedimages of people in ritual attire. As Michael O'Hanlonhas noted, traditions of adornment and display havelong been employed "to characterize e\ erything that is'different' and 'exotic' about Papua New Guinea(1989:16). In the National Geographic, for example:

Photo after photo shows us a head-and-shouldersshot of [Melanesian] men with painted faces, arti-facts through their nasal septums, and feathersrunning up from their headpieces. . male finery andself-display have been the most salient feature [ofMelanesia] for makers of the magazine (Lutz andCollins 1993:145).

Guineans, except in limited or fragmented way View-ers are discouraged from exploring commonalities,overlapping histories, or points of connection betweentheir societies.

Catherine Lutz and Jane Collins have criticizedphotographs like those in the National Geographic fortheir "superficial 'humanizing'of others rather than theempathetic probing of different lifeways, experiences,and interests ' (1993:^83). They suggest that readers ofthe National Geographic find its photograph in itinbecause it presents the world in an unthreatening way,allowing them to fantasize about travel to foreign lands(ibid 214-215). Yet the real shortcoming of NationalGeographic is not the absence of empathy, but rather alack of critical perspective about the power relationsthat influence all forms of cultural translation (Clifford

Figure 3. Fasu women going to make sago. Reprinted, with permission, from The People oj Lak,Kutubu and Kikori, p. 26. Photograph by Susan Turner. 1993 • by the Trustees of the Papua NewGuinea National Museum.

The treatment of exotic body images as emblematicof Melanesia may circumvent proper understanding ofMelanesians as subjects of their own meaningful ac-tions/ Neithercolonial history, nor change, nor moder-nity is implicated in such images of Papua New

1995:112). Making National Geographic more politi-cal might unsettle its readers, but it would also givethem the meanstobetterunderstandcultural difference.

Visual Anthropology Review Vo ume 12 Number 2 Fall/Winter 1996/1997 9 9

THE MEANINGS OF EVERYDAY LIFE

The People of Lake Kutubu and Kikori challenges theconventions of representation that dominate popularaccounts of Melanesia. Instead of focusing on ritual,Turner's photographs illustrate everyday life. Shedepicts men and women traveling by canoe, womenpreparing sago (the starchy staple made by processingthe pith of the Metroxylon palm), children swimming,a woman carrying a pig, a man carving a plate, anotherman holding his young son, a procession leading to amarriage exchange ceremony, and a tradestore. Thepeople in these photographs wear cloth skirts andblouses, short trousers and tee-shirts. They are engagedin commonplace activities, reflected in scenes that onemight encounter virtually anywhere in rural Papua NewGuinea today. Yet what they illustrate is rarely depictedoutside of ethnographies written for an anthropologicalaudience. The book includes only a single image of aman in ritual attire, his face painted black and red,wearing a feather headdress. The authors refer to thephoto when explaining how some of the people in theregion have become ambivalent about their own ritualsdue to the influence of evangelical Christianity (seeFigure 2). Turner also includes photographs of locallandscapes, including the intense blue waters of LakeKutubu, the cascading waterfalls located between theinterior mountains and the coast, and the other-worldlylimestone karst country. Several black and white pho-tographs of people and artifacts taken in the 1920s bynoted Australian photographer and filmmaker FrankHurley are reproduced in the text as well.

The chapters are divided according to standardethnographic categories, including the natural environ-ment, history, peoples and communities, subsistencepractices, material culture, and exchange and prestige.Each chapter is introduced with a story told by a personfrom the area, either an historical anecdote or a frag-ment of a local myth. The authors survey three ecosys-tems from the Gulf Coast north towards the PapuanPlateau, including the Kikori delta, the upper Kikori,and the area of Lake Kutubu itself. A number of distinctsocial groups live in the region: in the delta, the Kereboand the Poremo; along the upper Kikori, the Ikobi andthe Kairi; and near Lake Kutubu, the Foi and the Fasu.These are not culture areas in the anthropological senseof the term, but environmental and economic impactzones for the petroleum project at Lake Kutubu.

The authors make two major points, which aredirected in part towards the corporate managers of theKutubu Oil project. The first point is about socialorganization in the project area:

...people see themselves as belonging to small,politically independent clans and other kin groupswhich are linked by marriage and cooperation, anddivided by conflicts over land and other matters.But they also consider themselves residents ofparticular villages and members of larger, loosely-defined geographical and ethnic groups (1993:24).

Designations like Foi and Faso are labels that markcultural and linguistic similarities, not corporate groupscapable of collective decision-making and joint action.As a result, the "real economic and political units in theLake Kutubu area, as elsewhere in the Project area, areclans and groups of people linked by marriage and otherties" (ibid:28). James Weiner (1991:72) has criticizedChevron Niugini for its failure to take these social andpolitical realities into account when planning the projectand implementing the Kutubu Oil Project.

The authors draw on the archaeological record andmake reference to the colonial past in order to demon-strate that the region has a long history of social change.Their concern, however, is that change can be problem-atic if sudden and uncontrolled:

Cultures are never static, but always dynamic andadaptive. Although adaptation is a basic process inany culture, the rapid, externally caused changethat accompanies large-scale undertakings like theKutubu Project, presents a special set of problemsthat do not arise where transformations are slowerand less dramatic (Busse et al. 1993:2).

In situations where transitions occur slowly, thereis time to make new ideas and practices fit witholder ones—and vice versa. But where culturechange is rapid and the new is radically differentfrom the old, unforeseen and undesirable conse-quences can arise (ibid:2-3).

The meanings of daily life are particularly vulnerable toexternally-imposed change:

When the meanings of traditional objects and cus-tomary practices change rapidly and profoundly, it


Figure 4. Fasu woman preparing sago by pouring water into a basket full of sago palmpith. Reprinted, by permission, from The People of Laki Kutubu and Kikori, p. 4?.Photograph by Susan Turner. 1993 © by the Trustees oj the Papua New GuineaNational Museum.

Visual Anthropology Review Volume 12 Number 2 Fall/Winter 1 996/1997 101

is the coherence of culture the aspect ot culturewhich helps people understand their world—that isat risk. Radical social change presents people withconfusing messages about the meaning of daily lifeand their place in the world (ibid:76).

The authors suggest that the greatest challenge facingthe people of Lake Kutubu and Kikori is to adjust torapidly changing circumstances. They imply that Chev-ron Niugini should develop policies that would moder-ate the pace of change throughout the region.

Mountains of Papua New Guinea, close to the borderwith Irian Jaya, Indonesia. A billion dollar lawsuitbrought by local landowners against the mine becauseofits environmental impact downstream was settled outof court in June, 1996 (Kirsch 1996). Ok Tedi 24:00,like The People of Lake Kutubu and Kikori, receivedcorporate sponsorship.

While the text of Ok Tedi 24:00 is limited tocaptions that accompany the photographs, the sequenceof images forms a relatively coherent narrative. Thephotographs visually recapitulate the grand myth ofWestern technology conquering rugged landscapes on

Figure 5. 'An Afternoon Game of Marbles." Reprinted, with permission, from The People ofLake Kutubu and Kikori, p. 27. Photograph by Susan Turner. 1993 © by the Trustees of the Papua

IN THE SHADOWS OF Dtvn OPMENT

It is instructive to compare The People of Lake Kutubuand Kikori to a volume of color photographs of the OkTedi Mine entitled Ok Tedi 24:00 (Fishman et. al.1983). One of the world's largest open-cut copper andgold mines, the Ok Tedi Mine is located in the Star

the frontier, pitting machines and progress against theprimeval rainforest, which threatens to consume every-thing in its wake with mud, rain and fog. The machineryat the mine, enormous by any standard, seems evenlarger and more powerful when juxtaposed with localmen, who are slight in stature and wear little more thangourd penis sheaths in many of the photos. The 'twenty-

102 Volume 12 Number 2 Fall Winter 1996 1997 Visual Anthropology Review

Figure 6. Wabigcsc \illage on the Lower Mubi showing a longhouse flanked b\women's houses. Reprinted, with permission, from The Peopk of Lake Kutubu andKikori, p. 36. Photograph by Susan Turner. 1993 © by the Trustess of the NationalMuseum of Papua New Guinea.

four hours' of the title refers to the fact that most of thephotographs were taken during the course of a singleday (August 10, 1983), but could also denote theHerculean work schedule on top of Mount Fubilanwhere floodlights illuminating the mine are so brightthat they can be seen from fifty miles away. Photo-graphs of mine workers and the local environment aresupplemented by images that convey the global dimen-sions of the project, including heavy equipment beinsimanufactured forthe mine in Osaka, meetings at corpo-rate headquarters in Melbourne, and the signing of aloan agreement in New York with the United StatesOverseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC). Rob-ert Foster (1991:244) has suggested that popular booksdepicting a 'day in the life' of particular countries seekto derive national essence from simultaneous experi-ence. Here the sense of simultaneity is broader in scope,suggesting that international assistance is required tomove the people of Papua New Guinea into the indus-trial age.

What is the relationship between the message of OkTedi 24:00 and the objectives of the mine? The imagespraise development, endorse capitalism as progress,and valorize the global scope of the project. Theattention to commerce and technology serves much the

same purpose as the magician s sleight of hand: ourattention is drawn away from the problems created b\the mine. The Ok Tedi Mine currently releases morethan 80,000 tons of untreated tailings and other wastematerials into the local river system daily (Kirsch 1989,1992; Jorgensen and Rose 1994, Hyndman 1995). Yetthere are no photographs of the people living in thevillages downstream along the Ok Tedi River, whosecommunities are now surrounded by dead and dyingforest, and whose riverine gardens lie submerged be-neath several feet of mine waste. Nor are there anyphotographs illustrating the social problems in themining town of Tabubil, which include new inequali-ties and economic disparities, the monetization of so-cial relations prostitution, drunkeness and violence.

Published in 1983, Ok Tedi 24:00depicts the mineat the onset of production, so criticism of its optimismand its omissions might be seen as unfair. A decadelater, however, the Ok Tedi Mine sponsored yet anotherbook of photographs that depicts the project area, andthis \olume re\cals even less about the mine's impacton local communities. The Mm of the Papua New-Guinea Star Mountains: A Look at their TraditionalCulture and Heritage includes text and photographs byGerrit Sehuurkamp. who spent thirteen years workin

Visual Anthropology Review Volume 12 Number 2 Fall/Winter 1996/1997 103

Figure 7. Aerial view of Lake Kutubu Oil Project base camp and airstrip, 1994.Photograph by Stuart Kirsch.

on public health issues and disease control for the OkTedi Mine (Schuurkamp 1995). The objective of thetext is to encourage the people of the Star Mountains"not to ignore their past and to continue to [take] pride[in] their culture, otherwise it will be buried by progress(ibid'308). With this goal in mind, Schuurkamp tookphotographs of hundreds of peop le from the area dressedin traditional attire, or no clothes at all, even thoughWestern clothing has been regularly worn throughoutthe region for at least a decade. Thus the pages of TheMin of the Papua New Guinea Star Mountains are tilledwith photographs of uncomfortable and obviously em-barrassed young men and women engaged in traditionalactivities, stripped of all signs of modernity. There areno photographs of the Min in contemporary attire andcontexts until the final chapter. It is difficult to connectthe people photographed by Schuurkamp to their every-day selves, working at the mine, raising taro in town,waiting for planes to land at their rural airstrip, orchasing golf balls hit over the edge of the plateau atTabubil's golf course (Hyndman 1994, Polier 1996).

THE OTHER KUTUBU

If the two books about the Ok Tedi Mine ignore theproblems caused by the mine for the people residingnearby, are there similar omissions in The People ofLake Kutubu and Kikoril The authors intended theirbook to represent 'daily life in the Lake Kutubu andKikori areas as it was in 1991-92 during the construc-tion phase of the Kutubu Project" (Busse et al. 1993:2).While The People of Lake Kutubu and Kikori does notsuffer from the exaggerated flaws of the books on theOk Tedi Mine—praising development while ignoringits costs, or concealing the present with a caricature ofthe past—it does downplay the impact of the Kutubuproject by focusing its attentions elsewhere.

By June 1992 the problems associated with theKutubu Oil project were a significant part of everydaylife for the Foi and ;he Fasu I" ving close by, as McCoyreported in a front-page article in The Wall StreetJournal:

...deep in the jungle, it becomes clear that Chevronhas been having difficulty controlling its impact


here. Ironically, local clan leaders have demandedmore development than Chevron and environmen-talists originally wanted. Vital hunting and fishinghave been disrupted by the company's operationsand Chevron is enmeshed in countless jungle dis-putes—some of its own making, others caused bycorruption, inertia, cultural misunderstanding andancient tribal enmities (1992:A1).

These problems were sometimes manifested in con-frontations:

Villagers carrying spears, axes and bows and ar-rows have attacked several Chevron officials. Ve-hicles have been seized, roads blocked and workperiodically shut down (ibid.Al).

Missing from The People of Lake Kutubu andKikori are descriptions of the project's impact on localcommunities. What about the problems facing unem-ployed school-leavers, the substitution of canned fishand rice for fresh fish and sago, or the fenced-offcompound with the ironic sign "welcoming" visitors toKutubu Oil? What about the impact of the oil wells,pipelines, and other construction on the physical envi-ronment, as well as the proximity of the project to LakeKutubu and the damage that might occur in the event ofan oil spill?8

Turner's photographs are richly evocative of rurallife in Papua New Guinea, but they emphasize continu-ity at the expense of revealing change. For example, inthe chapter titled, "Making a Living," the photographsand text depict traditional subsistence resources andpractices, including sago-making, gardening, harvest-ing of tree crops, pig husbandry, fishing and hunting. Inthe concluding chapter, there is one picture of a manworking on the pipeline (1993:76); but where are thedrivers of company trucks, the security guards, theschoolteachers, and the women selling garden pro-duce? Similarly, the chapter on material culture fea-tures traditional objects, including wooden bowls,drums, bark capes, chert sago choppers and the art of thePapuan Gulf. While this material has important docu-mentary value, relatively little attention is paid to thecreative appropriation and integration of new materialsand styles that characterizes contemporary Papua NewGuinean material culture and art (see O'Hanlon 1993,Clifford 1995).

Given the fate of other large-scale resource devel-opment projects in Papua New Guinea, it is not diffi-cult to anticipate the possible negative consequencesof a project like Kutubu Oil. Colin Filer, writing aboutthe Panguna Copper Mine in Bougainville (NorthSolomons Province, Papua New Guinea), which hasbeen closed since a violent uprising of local landown-ers in 1989, has argued that mining projects are like'social time bombs':

...mines in almost any part of Papua New Guineawill generate the same volatile mixture of griev-ances and frustrations within the landowning com-munity, and, all other things being equal, blow-outs will occur with steadily increasing frequencyand intensity until there is a major detonation ofthe time-bomb after mining operations have con-tinued for approximately fifteen years.... In otherwords, I suggest that there is a general tendencyfor mining projects to have a negative, and poten-tially explosive, social impact on landowningcommunities... (Filer 1990:76).

In the Bougainville case, local dependence on corpo-rate payments for land use and labor, combined withprogressive environmental degradation, produced adownward cycle of social disintegration (Filer 1992).Reports from Kutubu over the last few years (Weiner1991, McCoy 1992, Kennedy 1996, Knauft 1996,Robie 1996) suggest that relations between landown-ers and the company may already be moving in thesame direction.

In addition to the problems of rapid, uncontrolledculture change described by Busse et.al., the Foi, theFasu and their neighbors face a number of political andeconomic challenges. They must contend with thedisruptive presence of new forms of social inequality,conduct negotiations with the government and Chev-ron Niugini over the distribution of revenue and roy-alties from the project, and compete with migrants intothe area for jobs and resources. Their response to theseproblems has been to seek greater participation in theproject, more influence over its policies, and a largershare of its benefits (Knauft 1996, Robie 1996).

In public debates about conflict between develop-ers and rural communities in Papua New Guinea,compensation demands made by landowners are gen-erally represented as being exaggerated, unrealisticand 'out of control' (Toft n.d.). Landowners are often


accused of being ignorant of political realities, greedy,or irrational. These widely-held views impair the effortsof rural communities to negotiate for increased influ-ence and a fairer share of benefits from developmentprojects that affect them (Kirsch n.d.). Similarly, therecommendation that Kutubu Oil should limit the paceof change in the region miglit impede local politicalaction.

ALTERNATIVE RLADINGS

A paradox haunts The People of Lake Kutubu andKikori. Its ethnographic focus is conservative in scope:the authors have chosen not to analyze the larger politi-al and economic issues that grip the region. Yet both

the selection of societies featured in the volume and theemphasis on culture change make sense only in relationto the petroleum project at Lake Kutubu. It would havebeen logical for the authors to discuss the direct impactof the project on those communities, as well as theanticipated long-term changes in the region.

Large-scale resource extraction projects like KutubuOil are ine\ itably accompanied by en\ ironmental dis-

tures. She argued that discourse about culture can bemanipulated to assign values which uphold existinghierarchies, while simultaneously creating the illusionof equality through the "multiplicity of form" (ibid:38).Even though claims about cultural distincti veness havebeen used to promote ethnic and nationalist agendasthroughout this century, other assertions about culturaldifference have been used to reinforce the positions ofthose in power. Thus Dominguez encourages us to ask,' .what is being accomplished socially, politically,

discursively when the concept of culture is invoked todescribe, analyze, argue, justify and theorize' (ibid: 21)?Her critique of the culture concept initially appears tobe so broad that it threatens to encompass the whole ofanthropology. Yet her advice is useful as a litmus testto ensure that cultural difference is not considered in avacuum, excluding power relations from its purview.

The consequences of the petroleum project at LakeKutubu extend well beyond the real m of culture change.The people of the region will need to draw on theircultural resources in order to better understand, takeadvantage of, challenge, or conceptualize alternatives

ruption. widespread social change, and other problems.Yet most ot the people li ving in rural Papua New Guineaare hungry for new opportunities, improved transporta-tion networks, better health care and education, andhigher standards of living. They want markets for theircash crops, employment, consumer goods, and money.Their desire for these things generally leads them towelcome development projects with open arms. Whileanthropologists working in such settings must respectthese decisions, they have the concomitant responsibil-ity to address their consequences. The response ofBusse et. al. to this Papua New Guinean dilemma wasto highlight the problems associated with rapid culturechange.

In a provocative essay on the ideological success ofthe anthropological concept of cultuie, VirginiaDominguez (1992-38) proposed that the use of cultureas a "marker of difference can reproduce power struc-

to various corporate and state initiatives (see Weiner1994). But as things begin to go awry at Lake Kutubu,culture change is a symptom, not the culprit. The realchal lenge is to find ways to ensure that the people of theregion have the power to participate as equals in makingdecisions that affect their lives and their environment,giving them greater control over the processes of change.

Busse, Araho and Turner deserve credit for chal-lenging the canons of popular representation with theirportrait of daily life in Lake Kutubu and Kikori. Yetthey might have taken their analysis one step further,showing how the Kutubu project has become a part ofeveryday life for the people of the region. Their focuson culture change, like photographs of the HighlandsShow which feature costumes at the expense of context,obscures much that anthropologists should work toreveal.


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am indebted to thank Glenn Banks, Ira Bashkow, JohnBurton, Bruce Knauft, Lynn Morgan, and MichaelWood for their constructive comments on this essay,even if we were not always in agreement. Participationin a National Endowment for the Humanities seminaron the politics of culture organized by Geoffrey Whiteand Lamont Lindstrom contributed significantly to mythinking on this subject. I would like to acknowledgethe Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Re-search for financial support of during the writing of thisarticle and the Department of Anthropology at theUniversity of Michigan for providing an ideal workingenvironment. The responsibility for this essay remainsmine alone.

NOTES

1. The photographer was Austin Super. The title of theexhibition was "Viewing Papua New Guinea: ATraveller's Photographs through the Eyes of an Anthro-pologist." The photographs were on display at theUniversity Museum of Archaeology and Anthropologyin Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from September to De-cember, 1992.2. Instead of replacing exchange ceremonies and war-fare, however, these performances became an addi-tional context in which people compete for status andprestige.3. Participation in these new public settings does notfully replace their prior meaning or political signifi-cance, but instead multiplies the possibilities of each bylinking them to new contexts and discourses (Otto andVerloop 1996), although perhaps in ways that haveunanticipated consequences (see also Errington andGewertz 1996).4. Lutz and Collins (1993:145-151) suggested thatrepresentations of Melanesians in National Geographicare structured by racial attitudes as well as a reversal ofexpectations regarding gendered behavior. The re-gional emphasis on male bodily adornment contradictsAmerican and European assumptions that such prac-tices are naturally female.5. In contrast, ethnographic analyses of ritual self-adornment seek to develop such understanding (e.g., A.and M. Strathern 1971, M. Strathern 1979, Knauft1989, O'Hanlon 1989).

6. The common exceptions are artifacts that are consid-ered 'out of place,' such as a pair of sunglasses wornover a painted face or a bubble-gum wrapper used fordecorative purposes. Lutz and Collins have suggestedthat the intrusion of such markers of the observer'sculture is meant to seem "amusing or quaint" (1993:211).Michael O'Hanlon (1993) has challenged this conven-tion by showing how this kind of borrowing is integralto local patterns of incorporating and domesticatingexternal influences.7. Schuurkamp's (1995:288, 305) concern about thepotential 'loss' of traditional culture is indicative of theaudience to which Busse et. al. directed their commentsabout culture change.8. The environmental impact of Kutubu Oil has beenlimited in comparison to the effects of logging andmining in other rural areas of Papua New Guinea, andChevron Niugini is proud of its 'green image' (McCoy1992). Critics such as Kennedy (1996), however, haveraised concerns about the potential for an oil spill.

REFERENCES

Babadzan, Alain1988 Kastom and Nation-Building in the South Pa-

cific. In Ethnicities and Nations: Processes oflnterethnic Relations in Latin America, SoutheastAsia, and the Pacific, R Guidieri, F Pellizzi and SJ Tambiah, eds., 199-228. Houston: Rothko Chapeland University of Texas Press.

Busse, Mark and Nick Araho1993 The People of Lake Kutubu and Kikori: Chang-

ing Meanings of Daily Life. Photographs by SusanTurner. Port Moresby: Papua New Guinea Na-tional Museum. Distributed by the University ofHawaii Press.

Clifford, James1995 Paradise. Visual Anthropology Review

Dominguez, Virginia1992 Invoking Culture: The Messy Side of 'Cultural

Politics.' South Atlantic Quarterly 91(1): 19-42.Errington, Frederick K and Deborah B Gewertz1996 Thelndividuation of Tradition in a Papua New

Guinean Modernity. American Anthropologist98(1): 114-126.

Fabian, Johannes1983 Timeandthe Other: How Anthropology Makes

its Object. New York: Columbia University Press.


Filer, Colin1992 The Escalation of Disintegration and the Rein-

vention of Authority. In The Bougainville Crisis:1991 Update, Matthew Spriggs and Donald Denoon,eds., 112-140. Political and Social Change Mono-graph 16. Bathurst: Crawford House Press.

1990 The Bougainville Rebellion, the Mining In-dustry, and the Process of Social Disintegration inPapua New Guinea. In The Bougainville Crisis, RJ May and Matthew Spriggs, eds., 73-112. Bathurst:Crawford House Press.

Fishman, Chuck, Noel Browne, and Tom Cooke1983 Ok Tedi 24:00. Designed and produced by

Thomas Cooke Associates (Brisbane, Australia)for Ok Tedi Mining Limited, Papua New Guinea.

Foster, Robert J1991 Making National Cultures in the Global

Ecumene. Annual Review of Anthropology 20:235-260.

Gewertz, Deborah B and Frederick K Errington1991 Twisted Histories, Altered Contexts: Repre-

senting the Chambri in a World System. New York:Cambridge University Press.

Handler, Richard1988 Nationalism and the Politics of Culture in

Quebec. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Hobsbawm, Eric1983 Introduction: Inventing Traditions In The In-

vention of Tradition, Eric Hobsbawm and TerenceRanger, eds., 1-14. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-versity Press.

Hyndman, David1994 Ancestral Rain Forests and the Mountain of

Gold: Indigenous Peoples and Mining in NewGuinea. Boulder: Westview Press.

Jorgensen, Daniel and Barbara Rose Johnston1994 Mineral Development, Environmental Degra-

dation and Human Rights: The Ok Tedi Mine,Papua New Guinea. In Who Pays the Price? TheSociocultural Context of Environmental Crisis,Barbara Rose Johnston, ed., 86-98. Society forApplied Anthropology, Committee on HumanRights and the Environment. Washington, DC:Island Press.

Keesing, Roger1989 Creating the Past: Custom and Identity in the

Contemporary Pacific. The Contemporary Pacific.1(1 &2): 19-42.

Kennedy, Danny1996 Drilling Papua New Guinea. Multinational

Monitor, 17(3):10-14.Kirsch, Stuartn.d. Indigenous Response to Environmental Im-

pact along the Ok Tedi. In Compensation andResource Development, Susan Toft, ed. Boroko:Papua New Guinea Law Reform Commission(Monograph No. 6). In press.

1996 Anthropologists and Global Alliances (com-ment). Anthropology Today. August 12(4). 14-16.

1992 Social Impact of the Ok Tedi Mine on theYonggom Villages of the North Fly, 1992. Ok-FlySocial Monitoring Programme, Report No. 5. PortMoresby: Unisearch PNG Pty Ltd.

1989 The Yonggom, the Refugee Camps along theBorder, and the Impact of the Ok Tedi Mine.Research in Melanesia 13:30-61.

Klein, Julia M1992 A Tourist's Glimpses of Stone Age, review of

Viewing Papua New Guinea: A Traveler's Photo-graphs Seen through the Eyes of an Anthropolo-gist, at the University Museum of Archaeology andAnthropology. The Philadelphia Inquirer. Friday,October 9.

Knauft, Bruce1996 Genealogies for the Present in Cultural An-

thropology. New York: Routledge.1989 Bodily Images in Melanesia: Cultural Sub-

stances and Natural Metaphors. Photographs byEileen M Cantrell. In Fragments for a History ofthe Human Body, Part 3, (Special issue #5 of Zone:A Serial Publication of Ideas in ContemporaryCulture), Michel Feher, Ramona Naddaff, and NadiaTazi, eds., 198-279. New York: Urzone.

Linnekin, Jocelyn1992 On the Theory and Politics of Cultural Con-

struction in the Pacific. Oceania 62:249-263.Lutz, Catherine A and Jane L Collins1993 Reading National Geographic. Chicago: Uni-

versity of Chicago Press.McCoy, Charles1992 Good Intentions: Chevron Tries to Show It Can

Protect Jungle while Pumping Oil, But Papua NewGuinea Tribes Grow Restless Over Pact for Pipe-line and a Road. The Wall Street Journal, June 9,pg. A1,A8.


Mihalic, F1971 The Jacaranda Dictionary and Grammar of

Melanesian Pidgin. Papua New Guinea: Web Books.O'Hanlon, Michael1993 Paradise: Portraying the New Guinea High-

lands. London: British Museum.1989 Reading the Skin: Adornment, Display and

Society among the Wahgi. London: British Mu-seum Publications.

Otto, Ton and Robert J Verloop1996 The Asaro Mudmen: Local Property, Public

Culture? The Contemporary Pacific 8(2):349-386.Polier, Nicole1996 Of Mines and Min: Modernity and its Malcon-

tents in Papua New Guinea. Ethnology 35(1): 1-16.Robie, David1996 Customary Land Fight over Oil Wealth. In

PNG: Ku.tu.bu Oil Land Dispute, PNG RainforestCampaign News [Online] Available e-mail:[email protected] and URL=http://gaial.ies.wisc.edu/research/pngfores/(4 February).

Schuurkamp, Gerrit J T1995 The Min of the Papua New Guinea Star Moun-

tains: A Look at their Traditional Culture andHeritage. Publication sponsored by Ok Ted Min-ing. Tabubil, Papua New Guinea.

Stephens, Sharon1995 Introduction: Children and the Politics of Cul-

ture in Late Capitalism. In Children and the Politicsof Culture, Sharon Stephens, ed., 3-50. Princeton:Princeton University Press.

Strathern, Andrew and Marilyn Strathern1971 Self-Decoration in Hagen. London: Gerald

Duckworth.Strathern, Marilyn1979 The Self in Self-Decoration. Oceania 59:241 -

57.Trask, Haunani-Kay1991 Natives and Anthropologists: The Colonial

Struggle. The Contemporary Pacific 3( 1): 159-167.Toft, Susan, ed.n.d. Compensation and Resource Development

Boroko: Papua New Guinea Law Reform Commis-sion (Monograph No. 6). In Press.

Weiner, James F1994 The Origin of Petroleum at Lake Kutubu. Cul-

tural Anthropology 9(11):37-57.

1991 Colonial Engagement in Third World OilExtractions: Some Examples from Papua NewGuinea. World Energy Council Journal, Decem-ber, 69-74.

Wright, Jordan M1983 The Highland Show: Mount Hagen/Goroka,

Papua New Guinea Expedition 26(1):38-45.


ethnographic representation - along the ok tedi · pdf fileethnographic representation in the...

Documents