scholarly journals Missing paradoxes and the evidential nature of things; Material objects in a cross-cultural perspective

1970 ◽  
pp. 107
Author(s):  
Bente Wolff
Keyword(s):  
Papua New Guinea ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Cultural Perspective ◽  
Village People ◽  
The Village

«[The] Father brought salt with him, he poured it on the hands and [the village people] tasted it. He gave them rice, and they thought it was ants' eggs. He gave them soap, and they cooked it. When they took it out [of the pot) it was melting. And he gave them boots, and they thought it was mermaid's' legs, so they cooked it. After cooking, they took it out to eat it, but it was really hard [so) they said: «the mermaid's leg is too hard to eat!» This story is about the first white missionaries in the Mekeo village Eboa in lowland Papua New Guinea. I heard it told by the clan chief Opu Ame in 1991. As always when this story was told, it caused great amusement among those listening. It describes how the grandparents of today's villagers had their first inexperienced encounter with the white peoples things at the turn ofthe century.

Book Reviews

2015 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 379-381
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Papua New Guinea ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Cultural Perspective ◽  
Economic Games ◽  
Experimental Economic

Jeffrey V. Butler of EIEF and University of Nevada, Las Vegas reviews “Experimenting with Social Norms: Fairness and Punishment in Cross-Cultural Perspective”, by Jean Ensminger and Joseph Henrich. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Seventeen papers, plus thirteen case studies available for download only, explore the historical emergence of prosocial norms and their relationship to economic growth. Papers in the text discuss theoretical foundations─the coevolution of social norms, intrinsic motivation, markets, and the institutions of complex societies; cross-cultural methods, sites, and variables; major empirical results─markets, religion, community size, and the evolution of fairness and punishment; and double-blind dictator games in Africa and the United States─differential experimenter effects. Case studies available for download discuss Hadza behavior in three experimental economic games; the effects of sanctions and third-party enforcers on generosity in Papua New Guinea; an experimental investigation of dictators, ultimatums, and punishment; behavioral experiments in the Yasawa Islands, Fiji; economic game behavior among the Shuar; economic experimental game results from the Sursurunga of New Ireland, Papua New Guinea; Maragoli and Gusii farmers in Kenya─strong collective action and high prosocial punishment; sharing, subsistence, and social norms in Northern Siberia; the influence of property rights and institutions for third-party sanctioning on behavior in three experimental economic games; cooperation and punishment in an economically diverse community in highland Tanzania; social preferences among the people of Sanquianga in Colombia; the effects of birthplace and current context on other-regarding preferences in Accra; and prosociality in rural America─evidence from dictator, ultimatum, public goods, and trust games.” Ensminger is Edie and Lew Wasserman Professor of Social Sciences at the California Institute of Technology. Henrich is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Culture, Cognition, and Coevolution in the Economics and Psychology Departments at the University of British Columbia.

COMBINING ORAL TRADITIONS AND BAYESIAN CHRONOLOGICAL MODELING TO UNDERSTAND VILLAGE DEVELOPMENT IN THE GULF OF PAPUA (PAPUA NEW GUINEA)

Radiocarbon ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Chris Urwin ◽  
Quan Hua ◽  
Henry Arifeae
Keyword(s):  
Papua New Guinea ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Spatial History ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Gulf Of Papua ◽  
The Village

ABSTRACT When European colonists arrived in the late 19th century, large villages dotted the coastline of the Gulf of Papua (southern Papua New Guinea). These central places sustained long-distance exchange and decade-spanning ceremonial cycles. Besides ethnohistoric records, little is known of the villages’ antiquity, spatiality, or development. Here we combine oral traditional and 14C chronological evidence to investigate the spatial history of two ancestral village sites in Orokolo Bay: Popo and Mirimua Mapoe. A Bayesian model composed of 35 14C assays from seven excavations, alongside the oral traditional accounts, demonstrates that people lived at Popo from 765–575 cal BP until 220–40 cal BP, at which time they moved southwards to Mirimua Mapoe. The village of Popo spanned ca. 34 ha and was composed of various estates, each occupied by a different tribe. Through time, the inhabitants of Popo transformed (e.g., expanded, contracted, and shifted) the village to manage social and ceremonial priorities, long-distance exchange opportunities and changing marine environments. Ours is a crucial case study of how oral traditional ways of understanding the past interrelate with the information generated by Bayesian 14C analyses. We conclude by reflecting on the limitations, strengths, and uncertainties inherent to these forms of chronological knowledge.

Word-initial [h]-drop variation in Nmbo

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 250-277
Author(s):  
Eri Kashima
Keyword(s):  
Papua New Guinea ◽  
Intergenerational Transmission ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
Natural Speech ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Speech Corpus ◽  
Language Ecology ◽  
Speech Data ◽  
The Village

Abstract This paper presents a natural speech corpus-based study of word-initial [h]-drop from the Nmbo speech community of southern Papua New Guinea. It is a speech community within a traditional egalitarian multilingual language ecology sustained by a practice of virilocal exogamy, and there is strong intergenerational transmission of local vernacular languages. This study investigates the propensity of word-initial [h]-drop in nouns, based on Nmbo speech data of Kerake tribe people. The results from the Nmbo Sociolinguistic Corpus shows clear age-conditioned variation, with younger speakers showing a higher propensity for [h]-drop. Nmbo speakers residing both within and outside their Nmbo villages of origin appear to be partaking in the innovative [h]-drop. The origin of the [h]-drop appears to be from the village with a more multilingual profile, as would be predicted by the notion of a multilingual feature pool (Cheshire, Kerswill, Fox, & Torgersen, 2011, Mufwene 2001).

scholarly journals The Psychology of Consensus in Melanesia

2007 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 54-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leo Marai
Keyword(s):  
Conflict Resolution ◽  
Papua New Guinea ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
Positive Influence ◽  
Case Vignette ◽  
Cultural Perspective ◽  
Essential Ingredient ◽  
Psychological Knowledge

AbstractConsensus is an essential ingredient for conflict resolution, reconciliation, agreement, and peace in Melanesian societies. The psychological aspects of its positive influence in establishing a common ground between conflicting parties have not been explored. From a psycho-cultural perspective, I focus on the positive dynamism of consensus. I provide the Bougainville crisis within Papua New Guinea as a case vignette to illustrate the utility and significance of consensus in the search for concrete principles to unite a ‘disoriented’ world. In doing so, the issue of incorporating indigenous psychological knowledge into mainstream psychology becomes clearer. The article searches for psychological principles germane to reducing conflict and maintaining peace. This kind of utility is exemplified in a case study of achieving consensus in Papua New Guinea.

scholarly journals Relocating Florence Weiss’ Fieldwork Photography as Anthropological Practice

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 91-98
Author(s):  
Michèle Dick
Keyword(s):  
Papua New Guinea ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
Black And White ◽  
The Village

During her 17 months of fieldwork (1972-74) in the village of Palimbei in Papua New Guinea, the Swiss anthropologist Florence Weiss took 5 674 black and white negatives and 4 794 col-our transparencies. Although the photographs were not taken at regular intervals, the average number of approximately 19 photographs per day gives an idea of the presence of photography in her fieldwork practice. Yet, Florence Weiss was not considered – or considered herself – a visual anthropologist. So, what kind of practice does her photography represent, and what role did it play in her wider fieldwork practice?

A new species of large green treefrog (Anura: Hylidae: Litoria) from northern New Guinea

Zootaxa ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 1208 (1) ◽  
pp. 57 ◽  
Author(s):  
STEPHEN J. RICHARDS ◽  
PAUL OLIVER ◽  
CHRIS DAHL ◽  
BURHAN TJATURADI
Keyword(s):  
New Species ◽  
Papua New Guinea ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
Adult Size ◽  
Green Frog ◽  
Green Treefrog ◽  
Lowland Forests ◽  
The Village ◽  
North Western ◽  
A New Species

A new species of large green frog of the hylid genus Litoria is described from northern New Guinea. The new species is superficially similar to Litoria graminea and L. infrafrenata. It can be distinguished from L. graminea by the possession of a poorly defined white labial stripe that does not extend beyond the ear, and from L. infrafrenata by the combination of comparatively small adult size (males 57.9–60.4 mm), fully webbed fingers and a call that is a long (0.7–0.9 s) deep guttural growl. It is known from lowland forests around the village of Utai in north-western Papua New Guinea.

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