The relationship between bridewealth and women's autonomy is not only discussed amongst anthropologists, development practitioners and other scholars but also amongst brides themselves. Women continue to embrace such marital exchanges, despite their knowledge of 'modern' development discourse about the constraints of the practice on women's status and its links to gender-based violence. This paper provides a visual exploration of contemporary brideprice practices and women's autonomy in Mt Hagen. We draw on scenes from our ethnographic film (An Extraordinary Wedding: Marriage and Modernity in Highlands PNG) to explore deliberations and developments that occurred in the case of a particular marriage that took place in 2012. We argue that the institution of brideprice has the potential to enhance the visibility of some women and the importance of their contribution to their own and husbands' kin groups. Despite current tensions regarding brideprice, it can serve as an avenue for the enhancement of women's political participation. The particular brideprice exchange featured in our film, raised concerns for the participants, which we consider in terms of three questions: Does brideprice commodify women? Does it play a role in gender-based violence? Is it inimical to aspirations for modernist individuality? We discuss the importance of bekim ('return gift') and suggest that this practice challenges the notion of brideprice as a commodity transaction. We argue that, while there may be an association between brideprice and gender-based violence, brideprice, in and of itself, is not causative of violence. The marriage represented in the film, and discussed in this paper, reveals the creativity of participants in adjusting the values inherent in the customary practice of brideprice to their contemporary aspirations.

Since Digicel services began to operate in remote areas of Papua New Guinea in mid-2007, enthusiasm for mobile telecommunication devices has become a pan-New Guinean phenomenon. During our last fieldwork period, between December 2010 and December 2011, no mobile phone network existed among the Karawari people in the East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea. However, their expectations were high and some individuals had already purchased mobile phones, which they used as torches, radios, and cameras. In Ambonwari village, people were convinced that Digicel would soon build its tower on their land and enable them to ring both the living and the dead. The dead had already interfered with calls and some people were suspected of possessing phone numbers of their deceased relatives. In our article we explore the relationship between mobile phones, the increasing fascination with phone numbers, and the ways in which the Ambonwari perceive, interpret, and engage with the world.Keywords: mobile phone, new technologies, spirits of the dead, religious movements, Karawari people, Sepik, Papua New Guinea Different theories surrounding the impact of technology on societies and cultures have emerged over time. From a substantive perspective new technology is a domineering and irresistible force in its own right. People have no control over it; they have to keep up with new techniques and these need to be efficient. Technology also serves to explain everything that is taking place in the world, be it society, politics, economy, science or art. From this point of view, technology is not neutral but changes cultures and shapes societies and values (Borgmann 1984: 9; Verbeek 2005: 136). From an instrumentalist perspective, however, technology is value-neutral. Human beings have been perceived as tool-makers since the beginning and technology, regardless of its complexity, is simply an instrument that humans use to accomplish certain tasks. Both rationalism and liberal democracy hold to this perspective, leaving values to develop in a private sphere (Borgmann 1984: 10; Verbeek 2005: 136). Recently a new post-phenomenological perspective has criticised both of these approaches, since they separate technology from human beings, their histories and their cultures. Don Ihde, a philosopher with a keen interest in the history of technology and anthropology, has tried to develop a positive phenomenological framework and phenomenologically-oriented hermeneutics for understanding human-technology relations (Ihde

Anthropologists and other scholars have long reflected upon the various authorial strategies employed in the construction of written ethnographic texts (Clifford and Marcus 1986; Geertz 1988). Similar questions of authorship and voice have been raised in relation to the making of ethnographic and documentary films (e.g. Ruby 1992; MacDougall 1998). Filmmakers frequently face intractable dilemmas of both ethics and aesthetics, when deciding what to include and what to sacrifice from hours of footage of complex socio-cultural practices and performances. We too have grappled with these dilemmas in the making of An Extraordinary Wedding, a film about brideprice transactions in the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea. In this paper we reflect upon the authorial strategies we have employed in this work-inprogress. We consider issues of authorship and authority and discuss our attempts to work with some of the 'characters' in the film to create an audiovisual narrative that can be understood and appreciated by a broader audience without diminishing the integrity of the lifeworld represented. An invitation In December 2012, one of the authors of this paper, Rosita Henry, was invited to Papua New Guinea to attend the brideprice exchange of the daughter of an old school friend from the Western Highlands. It was a poignant visit for her, as her friend, Magdaline (Maggie) Wilson, had passed away suddenly and unexpectedly three years earlier. Customarily, Maggie would have played a significant part in organizing the event, but her English husband Keith Wilson, and their children Bernadine, Olivia, Maki, and Nadia now had to shoulder the responsibility for working with their Highlands kin to arrange this complex ceremonial gift exchange between intermarrying clans and their allies.

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