The Unbounded Space and Moral Transgression: Capitalist Expansion in West New Britain

Guinness, Patrick

doi:10.1080/00664677.2018.1410779

Cited by 19 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 22 publications

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“…These include sorcery introduced in pre‐colonial times by Indonesian traders and sorcery practiced today by non‐Papuans who control or exploit Merauke's natural resources . Much like Yonggom in south central New Guinea (Kirsch :107–31) and Maututu in West New Britain (Guinness :38), who associate the Ok Tedi mine and oil palm plantations respectively with the figure of the sorcerer, Marind describe corporations as the latest and most prevalent form of suanggi in Merauke today. Marcelina, a mother of three from Mirav, for instance, described companies as always hungry for more land, just like kambara practitioners are perpetually hungry for the flesh and blood of vulnerable others.…”

Section: Corporate Sorcerersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wrathful Ancestors, Corporate Sorcerers: Rituals gone Rogue in Merauke, West Papua

Chao

2019

Oceania

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Anthropological studies of ritual ‘failure’ challenge the assumed efficacy of ritual in affirming the social order. Drawing from fieldwork in West Papua, I examine the ‘failure’ and ‘success’ of two rain‐making ceremonies – one hosted by an indigenous Marind expert, the other by an Indonesian oil palm corporation. Participants conceived the failure of the first ritual as a punishment meted by ancestral spirits against Marind who support agribusiness expansion. Meanwhile, the success of the corporate ceremony confirmed rumours that corporations wield foreign and powerful forms of sorcery. Drawing on Gregory Bateson's notion of the double bind, I suggest that the ritual outcomes dramatize the irreconcilable demands placed on Marind by custom and capitalism. Attempts to endorse agribusiness incur ancestral punishment, while efforts to oppose it are thwarted by the superior power of corporate sorcerers. In this context, I argue, the moral implications of the corporate ritual's unexpected ‘success’ prove just as problematic as those of the customary ritual's dramatic ‘failure’. Co‐opted yet efficacious, corporate rituals point to a new social order in which both Marind and their ancestral spirits find themselves subjected to foreign sources of supernatural control.

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Section: Corporate Sorcerersmentioning

confidence: 99%