Alchemy in the Rain Forest: Politics, Ecology, and Resilience in a New Guinea Mining Area (New Ecologies for the Twenty-First Century)

In Alchemy in the Rain Forest Jerry K. Jacka explores how the indigenous population of Papua New Guinea's highlands struggle to create meaningful lives in the midst of extreme social conflict and environmental degradation. Drawing on theories of political ecology, place, and ontology and using ethnographic, environmental, and historical data, Jacka presents a multilayered examination of the impacts large-scale commercial gold mining in the region has had on ecology and social relations. Despite the deadly interclan violence and widespread pollution brought on by mining, the uneven distribution of its financial benefits has led many Porgerans to call for further development. This desire for increased mining, Jacka points out, counters popular portrayals of indigenous people as innate conservationists who defend the environment from international neoliberal development. Jacka's examination of the ways Porgerans search for common ground between capitalist and indigenous ways of knowing and being points to the complexity and interconnectedness of land, indigenous knowledge, and the global economy in Porgera and beyond. Cover......Page 1 Title......Page 4 Copyirght......Page 5 Dedication......Page 6 Contents......Page 8 Acknowledgements......Page 10 Introduction......Page 14 Part I. The Making of a Resource Frontier......Page 34 1. Resource Frontiers in the Montane Tropics......Page 38 2. Colonialism, Mining, and Missionization......Page 62 Part II. Indigenous Philosophies of Nature, Culture, and Place......Page 90 3. Land: Yu......Page 94 4. People: Wandakali......Page 118 5. Spirits: Yama......Page 142 Part III. Social-Ecological Perturbations and Human Responses......Page 170 6. Ecological Perturbations and Human Responses......Page 176 7. Social Dislocations: Work, Antiwork, and Highway Life......Page 212 Conclusion: Development, Resilience, and the End of the Land......Page 242 Notes......Page 254 References......Page 262 Index......Page 282 In Alchemy in the Rain Forest Jerry K. Jacka explores how the indigenous population of Papua New Guinea's Porgeran highlands struggle to create meaningful lives in the midst of the extreme social conflict and environmental degradation brought on by commercial gold mining.