Dreams, Gender, and Artisanal Mining in Papua New Guinea: An Ethnography of Value (Library Binding) (ISBN-13: 9781836951766)

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 oneiric 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.

Author: Dan Moretti
ISBN-10: 1836951760
ISBN-13: 9781836951766
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Language: English
Published: 10/01/2025
Pages: 342
Format: Library Binding
Weight: 1.30lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.75d