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30
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251
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Introduction
John E Burton is a Principal Research Fellow at the Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining Australia, Sustainable Minerals Institute, Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology, The University of Queensland with principal interests in the social impacts of extractive industry and development anthropology in the Pacific, and Native Title anthropology in Torres Strait and North Queensland.
Publications
Publications (30)
In May 2020, when Rio Tinto destroyed ancient rockshelters in Western Australia to expand an iron ore mine, public outcry triggered a parliamentary inquiry. The value and effect of public sector inquiries have been debated for over a century. While the Juukan Gorge inquiry overlooked some important issues, it succeeded in illuminating critical flaw...
Papua New Guinea (PNG) is the Pacific’s largest country with one of the world’s lowest rates of energy access (13%). To address this development challenge, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and the USA joined hands with the PNG government in late 2018 and signed the PNG Electrification Partnership. The Partnership aims to electrify 70% of PNG’s popula...
In this paper, we compare resource governance in the nickel mining industry of New Caledonia with that in the mining industries of Papua New Guinea and Australia. We explore whether the notion of the ‘absent presence’ of the state can be applied where the state is of a different kind to that in Papua New Guinea and Australia, and most notably, as w...
This paper provides the first detailed characterisation of the interface dynamics between artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) and large-scale mining (LSM) activities in Papua New Guinea, recently termed ‘ASM-LSM interfaces’. We characterise these interfaces across the project lifecycle at operational, non-operating, and future mines. Despite ind...
Le Projet « PME Minières en Nouvelle-calédonie, Histoire, identités, enjeux » a complèté l’analyse du paysage minier calédonien en s’intéressant aux acteurs de l’extraction du nickel autres que les groupes métallurgistes, et analyse leurs relations avec les sociétés locales et leur rôle social, politique et économique dans la Nouvelle-Calédonie con...
The village of Manda in the Middle Fly District of Papua New Guinea lies in the floodplain of the Fly River among the riverine villages in the downstream impact zone of the Ok Tedi mine. As part of Ok Tedi Mining Limited's social and environmental monitoring and livelihood restorations programmes, visits for the purpose of development assessment we...
The Porgera gold mine in Papua New Guinea is a subject of contention in the international development community. Anthropologists are among a range of scholars who have investigated community-mine relations since 1981, as solo postgraduate students, as leaders of university research teams, as members of social impact assessment teams, and as members...
The Porgera gold mine in Papua New Guinea is a subject of contention in the international development community. Anthropologists are among a range of scho-lars who have investigated community-mine relations since 1981, as solo postgraduate students, as leaders of university research teams, as members of social impact assessment teams, and as member...
This paper discusses large-scale genealogical work at three projects in Papua New Guinea, West Papua and Australia and considers three questions: in what respects is genealogy intellectual property (IP) and, if so, who owns it; what were the regimes of permissions that permitted the collection of genealogical knowledge in each of the three cases; a...
In 1998, two multinational companies—Rio Tinto and Chevron—nominated their operations in Papua New Guinea (PNG) as examples of corporate social responsibility. Since then both companies have sold out of the operations that they nominated. Two other companies with a big stake in claims to social responsibility—British Petroleum and BHP Billiton—have...
Ethnography is a controversial activity when applied to development issues, notably the 'mineral policy process' in Papua New Guinea. This chapter concerns the kind of development where huge investments are involved—the Papua New Guinea minerals sector has been worth K2.2–2.4 billion in the last few years. The minimal view presented is that investo...
This paper contrasts models of increasing social integration in the central valleys of the New Guinea highlands advanced by Watson, Modjeska and Golson with that of a society constructed entirely differently at the eastern end of the central mountain chain, that of the Upper Watut of Morobe Province. Watut settlements were traditionally locked into...
This report covers a second assessment (Phase 2) of the impact of a major drought in Papua New Guinea (PNG). The Phase 2 assessment was carried out between 25 November and 12 December 1997. A previous assessment (Phase 1) was conducted between 25 September and 11 October 1997. The Phase 2 assessment achieved a better coverage of the country than th...
In my experience, when a group of rural Papua New Guineans is asked the question, 'whose land is this?', the answer is invariably, 'ours'. This literally truthful reponse belies the complexity of the question asked. 'Whose?' presupposes that informants and inquirers both understand the local pattern of social organisation and can name the customary...
Thesis (Ph. D.)--Australian National University, 1984.
This paper looks at how waste flakes can be used to characterize production on working floors, and describes a replication experiment designed to test the fit of two neolithic assemblages from different cultural contexts to a simulated pattern of axe manufacture, using a multivariate classification technique. Further discussion examines the basis o...
The means of owning and managing customary land (also known as traditional land) in Australia and the Pacific has been treated in many ways in the century and a quarter since Sir Arthur Gordon's initiatives in Fiji (France 1969) — the first large-scale attempt to accommodate native ownership in the framework of a Western system of administration.2...
Projects
Projects (2)
Le projet « Petit mineur » correspond à une demande formulée par les membres du CNRT « Nickel et son environnement » et le projet vise à combler un déficit de connaissance et à contribuer ainsi à affiner les politiques minières et améliorer les relations entre les grosses firmes transformatrices de nickel et les petites et moyennes entreprises extractrices.
