Martha Macintyre

Informed Consent and Mining Projects: A View from Papua New Guinea

Informed peoples human rights are respected whether as the subjects of research, holders of traditional ecological knowledge, recipients of medical treatment or citizens of a nation where economic projects are being developed. Informed consent has been widely deployed among the indigenous people who are minorities within nations such as Venezuela, Peru, Australia, the United States and Canada in campaigns for greater control over their land and natural resources.1 As an anthropologist working in the area of social and economic impact assessment in Papua New Guinea,2 I have become aware of the complex intersection of the interests of mining managers, scientists assessing environmental risk and social analysts reporting on local socio-economic impact and responses when informed consent is raised as a problem. This paper explores some political and practical problems associated with gaining informed consent for mining projects. While it concentrates on issues that have emerged in the Papua New Guinean situation, parallels can readily be drawn with other countries where resource development occurs.

“My Land, My Work”: Business Development and Large-Scale Mining in Papua New Guinea

Purpose – This chapter analyzes landowner business development and economic sustainability in the context of large-scale mining in Papua New Guinea with a focus on the Lihir gold mine. It pays particular attention to the social implications of success or failure of business development in mining contexts.Methodology/approach – This chapter is based upon ethnographic research and social impact monitoring studies conducted by the authors in Lihir between 1994 and 2012, as consultants and employees of the Lihir mining operation and as independent researchers. This chapter is also based upon broader research and consulting work undertaken by the authors at other mining locations throughout Papua New Guinea. The research is intended to explore the social changes generated by large-scale mining and related forms of business development, and the factors and strategies which constrain or enable landowners to get what they want from capitalism.Findings – Business development in resource extraction enclaves is structurally different from other nonresource development contexts and produces a more dependent and client-based approach to capitalism. In Lihir, research and ethnographic observations indicate that landowner business development is highly territorialized, which is captured by the landowner catch cry “My land, my work.” Ultimately, mining has provided significant economic opportunities for the local community, but these economic changes, especially through the distribution of mine-derived benefits and opportunities for business development, have involved processes that have divided people and entrenched inequalities.Practical implications – In Papua New Guinea, the close relationship between property ownership, landed interests, and capitalist engagement creates steep challenges for sustainable business development in resource enclaves. This research provides a strong foundation for exploring alternative strategies for economic development.Originality/value – Provides detailed insights into the social, economic, and political factors which influence sustainable business development in Papua New Guinean mining enclaves.

'Thoroughly modern mothers': maternal aspirations and declining mortality on the Lihir islands, Papua

Abstract Attempts to improve overall rates of maternal and child survival and health in Pacific societies have often sought explanation in the traditional ideas and cultural practices that were assumed to discourage women from embracing introduced, modern medical services. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and data collected in the context of social monitoring of the impacts of a mining project on the Lihir islands, this paper describes a case in which women have rapidly adopted Western medical treatments and hospital birth, and experienced dramatic health benefits as a consequence. Ease of access, quality and reliability of service provision were considered most important influences affecting women’s decisions, with cultural beliefs rarely invoked as reasons for giving birth in a village. It argues that, in spite of sharing many of the ideas and practices that have elsewhere been considered impediments to acceptance of hospital care, Lihirian women have embraced the new system as epitomising their progression to modernity.

Difficult Relations in Papua New Guinea Rain Forests

port them. For Curet, paleodemography is more complex, difficult, and intricate than many scholars have recognized. The finer details of political and social organization can be understood if one is prepared to examine variation within local population groups. The concern should be not just how many people occupy an area but who is included in that population. The people who once lived at these archaeological sites were subject to various levels of stress, coped with that stress differently, and made diverse decisions based on their individual or family needs. The concluding chapter again calls for paleodemographic studies to focus on smaller social groups when the data are available. Curet cautions that archaeology has long emphasized objects and assumed behavior based on those artifacts at the expense of the people who created them. People do not exist as ideal populations, and paleodemography is not analogous to ecological studies of plants and animals. There are a number of influential factors to be considered, especially at the social level. Curet notes that cultures do not migrate— people do. Aside from the introduction and conclusion, each chapter could be read independently of the others. Taken as a whole, however, the book synthesizes many questions regarding the social, economic, and political consequences of population movement. It does not provide absolute answers to the questions it raises, but that is because of the nature of the archaeological data recovered from Caribbean sites. Curet does convincingly challenge the dominant paradigm of island migration as a reaction to population pressure. He also suggests that there is evidence of complex interactions between groups of people beyond that of simple assimilation. These types of behaviors are difficult to reconstruct from the archaeological record, but Curet argues that the indications are there if the artifacts are considered from the proper theoretical perspective.

Book Reviews : White Women in Fiji 1835-1930: the Ruin of Empire?: Claudia Knapman Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1986

the process of social life (1984, pp. 45-46). But whereas O’Sullivan seeks to promulgate his ’absolutely certain’ methodological propositions, Latouche advocates a radically reflexive stance for social science. The objective is not to demystify for once and for all the confused or incoherent claims of others, in order to proclaim a new modality of truth in definitive. Rather, his preferred practice of social science involves ’a subversive criticism of the order established by institutionalised social sciences and a

Book Reviews : THE PRODUCTION OF INEQUALITY. GENDER AND EXCHANGE AMONG THE KEWA. Lisette Josephides. Tavistock, London and New York, 1985. x+242pp. No price available

first book in which missionaries, prospectors, and administrative officers appear alongside each other, and this is one of its important contributions to historical understanding. She also shows that highlanders became sufficiently committed to the presence of mission workers, that they were willing to make substantial efforts (including the ritual burning of spears, and more amicable relations among themselves) to retain their strange but useful visitors. These are important findings, which correct the standard accounts of the country’s colonial era.