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Dreams, Gender, and Artisanal Mining in Papua New Guinea: An Ethnography of Value

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Volume 8

Lifeworlds: Knowledges, Politics, Histories



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Dreams, Gender, and Artisanal Mining in Papua New Guinea

An Ethnography of Value

Dan Moretti

342 pages, 16 ills., bibliog., index

ISBN  978-1-83695-176-6 $135.00/£104.00 / Hb / Published (October 2025)

eISBN 978-1-83695-177-3 eBook

https://doi.org/10.3167/9781836951766


View CartYour country: - edit Request a Review or Examination Copy (in Digital Format)Recommend to your LibraryAvailable in GOBI®

Reviews

“This is a thoughtful, deeply researched and well-written study of dreaming, gold mining and gender relations in Papua New Guinea. It is a major contribution to several fields at once.” • Charles Stewart, University College London

“This is an excellent book: clearly written, interesting and easy to read, impressively erudite.” • Roger Lohmann, Trent University

Description

Up to 200,000 Melanesian men, women, and children work as artisanal miners, yet their lifeworlds are seriously under-researched. This ethnography of a multigenerational community of migrant miners in Papua New Guinea shows that dreaming mediates how they experience and manage gold mining. Men argue that they alone can mine successfully by forming dream marriage bonds with the spirits of the land. Women draw on their own dream experience to challenge this, asserting their equal capacity to marry spirits and their right to mine. For women and men alike, dreams provide legitimations of agency and commentaries on mutual dependencies and moral obligations in the domestic domain and between humans and nonhumans.

Dan Moretti was British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Girton College, Cambridge (2007−2010). Since 2007, he has consulted on projects related to artisanal and small-scale mining in Laos and Papua New Guinea.

Subject: Anthropology (General)Gender Studies and SexualitySociology
Area: Asia-Pacific


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