Learning to believe in Papua New Guinea

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dc.contributor.authorAndersen BA
dc.contributor.editorRio, K
dc.contributor.editorMacCarthy, M
dc.contributor.editorBlanes, R
dc.date.accessioned2023-08-06T22:37:01Z
dc.date.available2017-09-22
dc.date.available2023-08-06T22:37:01Z
dc.date.issued2017-09-22
dc.description.abstractThis chapter examines how witchcraft and sorcery beliefs are reproduced among the educated working and middle classes in Papua New Guinea. In a context where tertiary schooling is accessible only to a tiny segment of the population, many educated people in PNG feel anxious about their social position and worry that their upward mobility will provoke envy and resentment in the less fortunate. This anxiety is projected most strongly onto the “ples lain” or rural population, who are thought to maintain many traditional practices, including witchcraft and sorcery. Drawing on ethnographic research among nursing students in the Eastern Highlands, I examine the ways that class identity and Pentecostal social forms coalesce, giving students resources for narrating, understanding, and resisting the dangers they face as social outsiders and (future) employees of a neglectful state. Looking specifically at events during a nursing practicum in rural Eastern Highlands Province, I describe how students and their teachers collapsed different forms of invisible violence—both traditional and contemporary—into a generic evil to be discerned and resisted. Following Robbins (2009) I argue that witchcraft talk is exceptionally socially productive—in this case, productive of a distinctly Christian, professional class identity in which the problems created by “the villagers” and “pasin tumbuna” (ancestral practices) are objects of profound concern.
dc.description.confidentialfalse
dc.description.publication-statusAccepted
dc.edition.edition1
dc.format.extent235 - 255 (311)
dc.identifierhttps://www.palgrave.com/de/book/9783319560670#aboutBook
dc.identifier10
dc.identifier.citationPentecostalism and Witchcraft: Spiritual Warfare in Africa and Melanesia, 2017, 1, pp. 235 - 255 (311)
dc.identifier.doi10.1007/978-3-319-56068-7
dc.identifier.elements-id289143
dc.identifier.harvestedMassey_Dark
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10179/13604
dc.publisherPalgrave Macmillan
dc.relation.isPartOfPentecostalism and Witchcraft: Spiritual Warfare in Africa and Melanesia
dc.relation.isPartOfContemporary Anthropology of Religion
dc.relation.urihttps://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-56068-7_10
dc.rightsOpen Access
dc.titleLearning to believe in Papua New Guinea
dc.typechapter
pubs.notesNot known
pubs.organisational-group/Massey University
pubs.organisational-group/Massey University/College of Humanities and Social Sciences
pubs.organisational-group/Massey University/College of Humanities and Social Sciences/School of People, Enviroment and Planning
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