Richard Eves

• PhD
• Emeritus Professor at Australian National University

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 p...

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...

Some anthropologists prefer clear-cut depictions of the societies they study, preferring to ignore differences of opinion, failures of belief, and expressions of scepticism and doubt. This tendency is increasingly being challenged, and an emerging literature now explores scepticism. Contributing to this literature, I discuss the scepticism towards...

Some anthropologists prefer clear‐cut depictions of the societies they study, preferring to ignore differences of opinion, failures of belief, and expressions of scepticism and doubt. This tendency is increasingly being challenged, and an emerging literature now explores scepticism. Contributing to this literature, I discuss the scepticism towards...

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 pr...

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...

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...

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,...

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 responsibi...

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 underst...

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, in...

This Discussion examines the challenges for financial inclusion among coffee smallholders in the PNG highlands.

Examines the way in which some people in PNG see ART as a new form of social danger.

Drawing on research in Solomon Islands this SSGM In Brief discusses some of the challenges women face when trying to generate income. Demands for "credit" are a recurring theme in women's accounts of income generation and are bemoaned by women.

State, Society and Governance in Melanesia In-Brief 2017/1.

Examines some of the challenges women face in exiting violent relationships.

State, Society and Governance in Melanesia In-Brief 2015/68.

State, Society and Governance in Melanesia In-Brief 2016/17.

State, Society and Governance in Melanesia In-Brief 2016/15.

Sexual violence against women and girls is commonplace in Papua New Guinea (PNG). While the experiences of women are rightly given central place in institutional responses to sexual violence, the men who perpetrate violence are often overlooked, an oversight that undermines the effectiveness of prevention efforts. This paper draws on interviews con...

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...

The belief that illness, death and misfortune of all sorts is frequently caused by the deliberate interventions of individuals with special powers or magical knowledge is pervasive throughout Melanesia. As a result, sorcery and witchcraft beliefs and practices exert a powerful influence on many aspects of day-today life, as well as being significan...

In November and December 2013 a controversy erupted in Papua New Guinea when the speaker of the national parliament, Theodore Zurenuoc, a devout Christian, tried to rid Parliament House of what he described as 'ungodly images and idols' . Zurenuoc had already begun by removing the carvings from a lintel above the entrance to Parliament House, but p...

The issue of sorcery and witchcraft-related accusations and violence in Papua New Guinea is receiving increasing attention domestically and internationally. A growing body of literature is also focusing on the issue, providing non-government organisations, donor agencies, and the Papua New Guinea government with an evidence base for addressing the...

It is now widely accepted that women's economic empowerment brings a range of benefits even beyond gender equality gains for individual women, greatly improving the health, wellbeing, and productivity of entire families and countries, and contributing to effective, sustainable development. Recognising these substantial benefits, the Australian aid...

This chapter looks at the issue of religion and politics in the 2007 election in the Southern Highlands, focusing specifically on the Kagua-Erave Open electorate (Figure19.1). The great diversity in forms of religion in Papua New Guinea means that it is unwise to attempt to generalize about the effects of religion on politics. Although almost every...

The anthropologist Marie Reay once noted a ten-dency to lump sorcery and witchcraft together, often under either heading, and this, she felt, had brought a lack clarity to the situation (1987: 90-91). This remains true today for Papua New Guinea, where these terms are frequently fused or used interchangeably, and are rarely conceptually dis-tinguis...

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 audie...

Gender equality has become a major strategy for success in development work by donor agencies and non-government organisations (NGOs). In our region, AusAID and the New Zealand Aid Pro-gramme (NZAID) stress the importance of gender equality in both their policy documents and their delivery of aid (AusAID 2007; NZAID 2007). Much of the impetus for t...

Among the Lelet of central New Ireland (Papua New Guinea), a dramatic increase in Pentecostalist fervor has produced significant changes in dreaming. Traditionally, the Lelet have valued dreaming as a means of access to knowledge and power. Now it is seen as a gift bestowed by the Holy Spirit, giving access to new and different forms of knowledge a...

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,...

In preparation for the imminent end of the world, converts to new evangelical forms of Christianity among the Lelet of New Ireland must practise constant self‐scrutiny and self‐discipline. Previously wrongdoing was unproblematic if concealed; now signs of sin are keenly sought in self and others. Illness, as God's punishment, is a significant sign...

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 tha...

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 m...

Taking the example of the tubuan masked figure, an art form of New Ireland, I explore recent theoretical debates on the question of meaning in art. Challenging approaches that privilege the semiotic, I argue that this form of art is more appropriately seen as a revelation of power. The tubuan brings forth the concealed efficacy, capacities and inte...

This introductory chapter argues that HIV/AIDS is not simply a biomedical phenomenon but a complex biosocial occurrence. Much as other incoming trends, beliefs, and practices are reshaped within different cultures, diseases are also changed when they appear in different cultures. As such, it is important to analyze how AIDS is understood, accounted...

This chapter discusses how new forms of Christianity have become a major influence on how the Lelet of central New Ireland comprehends HIV/AIDS. The cultural resources drawn on by the Lelet in making sense of the AIDS epidemic come from their own indigenous culture and also from their long history of contact with Western social forms, ideas, and pr...

In Melanesia, rates of HIV infection are among the highest in the Pacific and increasing rapidly, with grave humanitarian, development, and political implications. There is a great need for social research on HIV/AIDS in the region to provide better insights into the sensitive issues surrounding HIV transmission. This collection, the first book on...

In Melanesia, rates of HIV infection are among the highest in the Pacific and increasing rapidly, with grave humanitarian, development, and political implications. There is a great need for social research on HIV/AIDS in the region to provide better insights into the sensitive issues surrounding HIV transmission. This collection, the first book on...

In the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, evangelical Christians in the United States expressed their eagerness to enter the ruined country to proselytize among the population. Foremost among them was the outspoken Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham, and heir to his father’s evangelical dynasty. Previously, Franklin Graham had condemned I...

Taking the example of ‘Studies in black and white', a genre of photographs taken around the end of the nineteenth century by Methodist missionaries in the Pacific, this article seeks to go beyond conventional analyses that scrutinize colonial photography for forms of domination. I argue that these photographs, and the context in which some of them...

Though the suitability of the tropics for European colonization and especially settlement had been a long-standing issue, it was particularly hotly debated from the mid-nineteenth century until at least the turn of the nineteenth century, when the imperatives of expanding imperial ventures placed the issue firmly on the agenda. This article explore...

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 per...

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 na...

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 Lelet respondents in New Irelan...

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...

Through an exploration of some of the negotiations occurring in the cultural sphere of religion, I problematise the term globalisation, challenge some of the assumptions that have been made about it, and argue that, in a particular sense, it has become a two-way process. Taking the case of the experience of the 1997-98 drought on the Lelet Plateau...

1 Richard Eves In what ways do people attach meaning to and organize space and place? (Tuan 1977:5). In this paper I explore the relationship between people and place. My aim is to show how space is transformed into lived space or place. I explore the way that people conceive of themselves through the space that they imaginatively create around the...

This paper explores the connection between body and memory for the people of the Lelet Plateau of central New Ireland. Through an examination of the processes by which memories of mortuary feasts are created and circulated, I draw attention to the embodied nature of memory as a central facet in the politics of feasting. The approach taken here diff...

This article explores aspects of bodily belief and embodiment among the people of the Lelet Plateau of central New Ireland (Papua New Guinea). Far from being merely a surface upon which power relations are inscribed, as is suggested by some Western theory, the body, for the Lelet, is a central and active site for the appropriation of power. Power c...

This thesis explores and describes the lived world of the people inhabiting the Lelet Plateau in central New Ireland, Papua New Guinea. Its particular focus is embodiment and the forms of corporeal imagery in magical belief, interpreted from a perspective that draws on Bakhtin's dialogism and Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology. Bakhtin argues that dialo...

Thesis (PhD)--Australian National University, 1994.