The Spirits of Conservation
Ecology, Christianity, and Resource Management in Highlands Papua New Guinea
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v4i1.24Keywords:
sacred ecology, ecocosmologies, Christianity, traditional ecological knowledgeAbstract
In environmental circles, there are two long-running debates about (1) whether or not indigenous peoples are truly conservationists, and (2) whether or not Christianity is inherently inimical to conservation. In this article, I bring these two debates into dialogue by exploring the changes in resource management practices of an indigenous group in highlands Papua New Guinea, many of whom have recently converted to Christianity. In Porgera, spirits are critical for maintaining and regulating ecological affairs, so it could be assumed that Christianity would erode whatever conservationist principles are extant in traditional religious belief. This is not the case, however. Traditional, conservation-like practices were dependent upon particular spirits, resources, and ecological zones. Christianity has engaged with these spirits, resources, and zones in complex ways. I argue that we need more nuanced understandings of how the global spread of world religions are integrating with traditional resource management practices to more effectively promote sustainability.
References
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Agrawal, A., and C. Gibson. 1999. ‘Enchantment and Disenchantment: The Role of Community in Natural Resource Conservation’, World Development 27.4: 629-49. doi:10.1016/S0305-750X(98)00161-2.
Alcorn, J. 1993. ‘Indigenous Peoples and Conservation’, Conservation Biology 7.2: 424-26. doi:10.1046/j.1523-1739.1993.07020424.x.
Århem, K. 1996. ‘The Cosmic Food Web: Human–Nature Relatedness in the Northwest Amazon’, in P. Descola and G. Palsson (eds.), Nature and Society: Anthropological Perspectives (New York: Routledge): 185-204.
Balée, W. 1992. ‘Indigenous History and Amazonian Biodiversity’, in Steen and Tucker 1992: 185-97.
———. 1998. ‘Historical Ecology: Premises and Postulates’, in W. Balée (ed.), Advances in Historical Ecology (New York: Columbia University Press): 13-29.
Barbour, I. (ed.). 1973. Western Man and Environmental Ethics: Attitudes toward Nature and Technology (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing).
Bateson, G., and M.C. Bateson. 1987. Angels Fear: Towards an Epistemology of the Sacred (Creskill, NJ: Hampton Press).
Berkes, F. 2008. Sacred Ecology (New York: Routledge, 2nd edn).
Berkes, F., J. Colding, and C. Folke. 2000. ‘Rediscovery of Traditional Environmental Knowledge as Adaptive Management’, Ecological Applications 10.5: 1251-62. doi:10.1890/1051-0761(2000)010[1251:ROTEKA]2.0.CO;2.
Berry, R.J. 2006. ‘Introduction: Stewardship—A Default Position?’, in Berry (ed.) 2006: 1-16.
Berry, R.J. (ed.). 2006. Environmental Stewardship: Critical Perspectives—Past and Present (London: T. & T. Clark).
Biersack, A. 1998a. ‘Sacri_ce and Regeneration among Ipilis: The View from Tipinini’, in L.R. Goldman and C. Ballard (eds.), Fluid Ontologies: Myth, Ritual and Philosophy in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea (Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey): 43-66.
———. 1998b. ‘Horticulture and Hierarchy: The Youthful Beauti_cation of the Body in the Paiela and Porgera Valleys’, in G. Herdt and S. Leavitt (eds.), Adolescence in Paci_c Island Societies (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press): 71-91.
———. 1999. ‘Introduction: From the “New Ecology” to the New Ecologies’, American Anthropologist 101.1: 5-18. doi:10.1525/aa.1999.101.1.5.
———. 2006. ‘Red River, Green War: The Politics of Nature along the Porgera River’, in Biersack and Greenberg 2006: 233-80.
Biersack, A., and J.B. Greenberg (eds.). 2006. Reimagining Political Ecology (Durham: Duke University Press).
Brosius, J.P., and D. Russell. 2003. ‘Conservation from Above: An Anthropological Perspective on Transboundary Protected Areas and Ecoregional Planning’, Journal of Sustainable Forestry 17.1/2: 35-60.
Brosius, J.P., A. Tsing, and C. Zerner (eds.). 2005. Communities and Conservation: Histories and Politics of Community-based Natural Resource Management (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press).
Bulmer, R. 1982. ‘Traditional Conservation Practices in Papua New Guinea’, in L. Morauta et al. (eds.), Traditional Conservation in Papua New Guinea: Implications for Today (Boroko, PNG: Institute of Applied Social and Economic Research): 59-77.
Cannell, F. (ed.). 2006. The Anthropology of Christianity (Durham: Duke University Press).
Conklin, B.A., and L.R. Graham. 1995. ‘The Shifting Middle Ground: Amazonian Indians and Eco-Politics’, American Anthropologist 97.4: 695-710. doi:10.1525/ aa.1995.97.4.02a00120.
Cruikshank, J. 2005. Do Glaciers Listen? Local Knowledge, Colonial Encounters, and Social Imagination (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press).
Deloria Jr, V. 2000. ‘The Speculations of Krech’, Worldviews: Environment, Culture, Religion 4.3: 283-93.
Descola, P. 1996. In the Society of Nature: A Native Ecology in Amazonia (trans. J. Lloyd; New York: The New Press).
Dove, M.R., and D. Kammen. 1997. ‘The Epistemology of Sustainable Resource Use: Managing Forest Products, Swiddens, and High-Yielding Variety Crops’, Human Organization 56.1: 91-101.
Dubos, R. 1974. ‘Franciscan Conservation versus Benedictine Stewardship’, in Spring and Spring 1974: 114-36.
Fairhead, J., and M. Leach. 1996. ‘False Forest History, Complicit Social Analysis: Rethinking Some West African Environmental Narratives’, World Development 23.6: 1023-35. doi:10.1016/0305-750X(95)00026-9.
Fomin, E.S.D. 2008. ‘Royal Residences and Sacred Forests in Western Cameroon: The Intersection of Secular and Spiritual Authority’, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 2: 391-407.
Gibbs, P. 1975. ‘Ipili Religion Past and Present’ (MA diss., University of Sydney).
Gottleib, R. 2007. ‘Religious Environmentalism: What it is, Where it’s Heading and Why we Should be Going in the Same Direction’, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 1: 81-91.
The Green Bible. 2008. The Green Bible (New York: HarperCollins).
Haenn, N. 1999. ‘The Power of Environmental Knowledge: Ethnoecology and Environmental Con_icts in Mexican Conservation’, Human Ecology 27.3: 477-91. doi:10.1023/A:1018731708560.
Harkin, M., and D. Lewis (eds.). 2007. Native Americans and the Environment: Perspectives on the Ecological Indian (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press).
Hessel, D.T., and R.R. Ruether (eds.). 2000. Christianity and Ecology: Seeking the Well-Being of Earth and Humans (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
Horowitz, L. 2008. ‘Destroying God’s Creation or Using What He Provided? Cultural Models of a Mining Project in New Caledonia’, Human Organization 67.3: 292-306.
Hunn, E., D. Johnson, P. Russell, and T. Thornton. 2003. ‘Huna Tlingit Traditional Environmental Knowledge, Conservation, and the Management of a “Wilderness” Park’, Current Anthropology 44 (Supplement): 79-103. doi:10.1086/377666.
Igoe, J. 2004. Conservation and Globalization: A Study of National Parks and Indigenous Communities from East Africa to South Dakota (Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth).
Ingold, T. 2000. The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling, and Skill (London: Routledge).
Jacka, J. 2007. ‘ “Our Skins are Weak”: Ipili Modernity and the Demise of Discipline’, in S. Bamford (ed.), Embodying Modernity and Postmodernity: Ritual, Praxis, and Social Change in Melanesia (Durham: Carolina Academic Press): 39-67.
Kinsley, D. 1995. Ecology and Religion: Ecological Spirituality in Cross-Cultural Perspective. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Krech III, S. 1999. The Ecological Indian: Myth and History (New York: W.W. Norton).
Kulick, D. 1992. ‘Coming Up in Gapun: Conceptions of Development and their Effect on Language in a Papua New Guinea Village’, in G. Dahl and A. Rabo (eds.), Kam-ap or Take-off: Local Notions of Development (Uppsala: Stockholm Studies in Social Anthropology): 10-34.
Lansing, S. 1991. Priests and Programmers: Technologies of Power in the Engineered Landscape of Bali (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
Nadasdy, P. 2003. Hunters and Bureaucrats: Power, Knowledge, and Aboriginal–State Relations in the Southwest Yukon (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press).
———. 2005. ‘Transcending the Debate over the Ecologically Noble Indian: Indigenous Peoples and Environmentalism’, Ethnohistory 52.2: 291-331. doi:10.1215/00141801-52-2-291.
Ntiamoa-Baidu, Y. 2008. ‘Indigenous Beliefs and Biodiversity Conservation: The Effectiveness of Sacred Groves, Taboos and Totems in Ghana for Habitat and Species Conservation’, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 2: 309-26.
Oates, J. 1999. Myth and Reality in the Rain Forest: How Conservation Strategies are Failing in West Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press).
Palmer, C. 2006. ‘Stewardship: A Case Study in Environmental Ethics’, in Berry (ed.) 2006: 63-75.
Posey, D. 1985. ‘Indigenous Management of Tropical Forest Ecosystems: The Case of the Kayapó Indians of the Brazilian Amazon’, Agroforestry Systems 3: 139-58. doi:10.1007/BF00122640.
Primack, R., and R. Corlett. 2005. Tropical Rain Forests: An Ecological and Biogeographical Comparison (Oxford: Blackwell).
Rappaport, R. 1984. Pigs for the Ancestors: Ritual in the Ecology of a New Guinea People (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2nd edn).
Redford, K. 1991. ‘The Ecologically Noble Savage’, Cultural Survival Quarterly 15: 46-48.
Redford, K., and A. Stearman. 1993. ‘Forest dwelling Native Amazonians and the Conservation of Biodiversity: Interests in Common or in Collision?’, Conservation Biology 7.2: 248-55. doi:10.1046/j.1523-1739.1993.07020248.x.
Richards, S.J. (ed.). 2007. A Rapid Biodiversity Assessment of the Kaijende Highlands, Enga Province, Papua New Guinea (Arlington, VA: Conservation International).
Robbins, J. 2004. Becoming Sinners: Christianity and Moral Torment in a Papua New Guinea Society (Berkeley: University of California Press).
———. 2006. ‘Properties of Nature, Properties of Culture: Ownership, Recognition, and the Politics of Nature in a Papua New Guinea Society’, in Biersack and Greenberg 2006: 171-91.
Robinson, J. 1993. ‘The Limits to Caring: Sustainable Living and the Loss of Biodiversity’, Conservation Biology 7.1: 20-28. doi:10.1046/j.1523-1739.1993.07010020.x.
Shearman, P., et al. 2009. ‘Forest Conversion and Degradation in Papua New Guinea, 1972–2002’, Biotropica 41.3: 379-90. doi:10.1111/j.1744-7429.2009.00495.x.
Sillitoe, P. 1996. A Place against Time: Land and Environment in the Papua New Guinea Highlands (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic).
Smith, E., and M. Wishnie. 2000. ‘Conservation and Subsistence in Small-Scale Societies’, Annual Review of Anthropology 29: 493-524. doi:10.1146/annurev.anthro.29.1.493.
Sponsel, L. 1992. ‘The Environmental History of Amazonia: Natural and Human Disturbances, and the Ecological Transition’, in Steen and Tucker 1992: 233-51.
———. 2005. ‘Noble Savage and the “Ecologically Noble” Savage’, in Taylor 2005: 1210-12.
Spring, D., and E. Spring (eds.). 1974. Ecology and Religion in History (New York: Harper Torchbooks).
Steen, H., and R. Tucker (eds.). 1992. Changing Tropical Forests: Historical Perspectives on Today’s Challenges in Central and South America (Durham: Forest History Society).
Stewart, P., and A. Strathern. 2002. Remaking the World: Myth, Mining, and Ritual Change among the Duna of Papua New Guinea (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press).
Stritecky, J. 1999. ‘Capitalist Consumerism and the Spirit of the Millennium in Rural East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea’, in C.K. Schmid (ed.), Expecting the Day of Wrath: Versions of the Millennium in Papua New Guinea (Boroko, PNG: National Research Institute): 70-79.
Taylor, B. (ed.). 2005. The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature (London: Thoemmes Continuum).
Terborgh, J. 1999. Requiem for Nature (Washington, DC: Island Press).
Tiedje, K. 2007. ‘The Promise of the Discourse of the Sacred for Conservation (and its Limits)’, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 1: 326-39.
Turnbull, C. 1961. The Forest People (New York: Doubleday & Co.).
———. 1972. The Mountain People (New York: Simon & Schuster).
Viveiros de Castro, E. 1998. ‘Cosmological Deixis and Amerindian Perspectivism’, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 4.3: 469-88. doi:10.2307/3034157.
West, P. 2006. Conservation is Our Government Now: The Politics of Ecology in Papua New Guinea (Durham: Duke University Press).
West, P., J. Igoe, and D. Brockington. 2006. ‘Parks and Peoples: The Social Impact of Protected Areas’, Annual Review of Anthropology 35: 251-77. doi:10.1146/annurev.anthro.35.081705.123308.
White Jr, L. 1967. ‘The Historical Roots of our Ecologic Crisis’, Science 155.3767: 1203-1207. doi:10.1126/science.155.3767.1203.
———. 1973. ‘Continuing the Conversation’, in I. Barbour (ed.), Western Man and Environmental Ethics: Attitudes toward Nature and Technology (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing): 55-64.
Whitney, E. 2005. ‘White, Lynn (1907–1987)—Thesis of’, in Taylor 2005: 1735-37.
Wright, R. 2007. ‘Indigenous Moral Philosophies and Ontologies and their Implications for Sustainable Development’, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 1: 92-108.
———. 2009. ‘Baniwa Art: The Baniwa Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Sustainable Development’, in A. Vilaça and R. Wright (eds.), Native Christians: Modes and Effects of Christianity among Indigenous Peoples of the Americas (Burlington, VT: Ashgate): 187-210.
Agrawal, A., and C. Gibson. 1999. ‘Enchantment and Disenchantment: The Role of Community in Natural Resource Conservation’, World Development 27.4: 629-49. doi:10.1016/S0305-750X(98)00161-2.
Alcorn, J. 1993. ‘Indigenous Peoples and Conservation’, Conservation Biology 7.2: 424-26. doi:10.1046/j.1523-1739.1993.07020424.x.
Århem, K. 1996. ‘The Cosmic Food Web: Human–Nature Relatedness in the Northwest Amazon’, in P. Descola and G. Palsson (eds.), Nature and Society: Anthropological Perspectives (New York: Routledge): 185-204.
Balée, W. 1992. ‘Indigenous History and Amazonian Biodiversity’, in Steen and Tucker 1992: 185-97.
———. 1998. ‘Historical Ecology: Premises and Postulates’, in W. Balée (ed.), Advances in Historical Ecology (New York: Columbia University Press): 13-29.
Barbour, I. (ed.). 1973. Western Man and Environmental Ethics: Attitudes toward Nature and Technology (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing).
Bateson, G., and M.C. Bateson. 1987. Angels Fear: Towards an Epistemology of the Sacred (Creskill, NJ: Hampton Press).
Berkes, F. 2008. Sacred Ecology (New York: Routledge, 2nd edn).
Berkes, F., J. Colding, and C. Folke. 2000. ‘Rediscovery of Traditional Environmental Knowledge as Adaptive Management’, Ecological Applications 10.5: 1251-62. doi:10.1890/1051-0761(2000)010[1251:ROTEKA]2.0.CO;2.
Berry, R.J. 2006. ‘Introduction: Stewardship—A Default Position?’, in Berry (ed.) 2006: 1-16.
Berry, R.J. (ed.). 2006. Environmental Stewardship: Critical Perspectives—Past and Present (London: T. & T. Clark).
Biersack, A. 1998a. ‘Sacri_ce and Regeneration among Ipilis: The View from Tipinini’, in L.R. Goldman and C. Ballard (eds.), Fluid Ontologies: Myth, Ritual and Philosophy in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea (Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey): 43-66.
———. 1998b. ‘Horticulture and Hierarchy: The Youthful Beauti_cation of the Body in the Paiela and Porgera Valleys’, in G. Herdt and S. Leavitt (eds.), Adolescence in Paci_c Island Societies (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press): 71-91.
———. 1999. ‘Introduction: From the “New Ecology” to the New Ecologies’, American Anthropologist 101.1: 5-18. doi:10.1525/aa.1999.101.1.5.
———. 2006. ‘Red River, Green War: The Politics of Nature along the Porgera River’, in Biersack and Greenberg 2006: 233-80.
Biersack, A., and J.B. Greenberg (eds.). 2006. Reimagining Political Ecology (Durham: Duke University Press).
Brosius, J.P., and D. Russell. 2003. ‘Conservation from Above: An Anthropological Perspective on Transboundary Protected Areas and Ecoregional Planning’, Journal of Sustainable Forestry 17.1/2: 35-60.
Brosius, J.P., A. Tsing, and C. Zerner (eds.). 2005. Communities and Conservation: Histories and Politics of Community-based Natural Resource Management (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press).
Bulmer, R. 1982. ‘Traditional Conservation Practices in Papua New Guinea’, in L. Morauta et al. (eds.), Traditional Conservation in Papua New Guinea: Implications for Today (Boroko, PNG: Institute of Applied Social and Economic Research): 59-77.
Cannell, F. (ed.). 2006. The Anthropology of Christianity (Durham: Duke University Press).
Conklin, B.A., and L.R. Graham. 1995. ‘The Shifting Middle Ground: Amazonian Indians and Eco-Politics’, American Anthropologist 97.4: 695-710. doi:10.1525/ aa.1995.97.4.02a00120.
Cruikshank, J. 2005. Do Glaciers Listen? Local Knowledge, Colonial Encounters, and Social Imagination (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press).
Deloria Jr, V. 2000. ‘The Speculations of Krech’, Worldviews: Environment, Culture, Religion 4.3: 283-93.
Descola, P. 1996. In the Society of Nature: A Native Ecology in Amazonia (trans. J. Lloyd; New York: The New Press).
Dove, M.R., and D. Kammen. 1997. ‘The Epistemology of Sustainable Resource Use: Managing Forest Products, Swiddens, and High-Yielding Variety Crops’, Human Organization 56.1: 91-101.
Dubos, R. 1974. ‘Franciscan Conservation versus Benedictine Stewardship’, in Spring and Spring 1974: 114-36.
Fairhead, J., and M. Leach. 1996. ‘False Forest History, Complicit Social Analysis: Rethinking Some West African Environmental Narratives’, World Development 23.6: 1023-35. doi:10.1016/0305-750X(95)00026-9.
Fomin, E.S.D. 2008. ‘Royal Residences and Sacred Forests in Western Cameroon: The Intersection of Secular and Spiritual Authority’, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 2: 391-407.
Gibbs, P. 1975. ‘Ipili Religion Past and Present’ (MA diss., University of Sydney).
Gottleib, R. 2007. ‘Religious Environmentalism: What it is, Where it’s Heading and Why we Should be Going in the Same Direction’, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 1: 81-91.
The Green Bible. 2008. The Green Bible (New York: HarperCollins).
Haenn, N. 1999. ‘The Power of Environmental Knowledge: Ethnoecology and Environmental Con_icts in Mexican Conservation’, Human Ecology 27.3: 477-91. doi:10.1023/A:1018731708560.
Harkin, M., and D. Lewis (eds.). 2007. Native Americans and the Environment: Perspectives on the Ecological Indian (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press).
Hessel, D.T., and R.R. Ruether (eds.). 2000. Christianity and Ecology: Seeking the Well-Being of Earth and Humans (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
Horowitz, L. 2008. ‘Destroying God’s Creation or Using What He Provided? Cultural Models of a Mining Project in New Caledonia’, Human Organization 67.3: 292-306.
Hunn, E., D. Johnson, P. Russell, and T. Thornton. 2003. ‘Huna Tlingit Traditional Environmental Knowledge, Conservation, and the Management of a “Wilderness” Park’, Current Anthropology 44 (Supplement): 79-103. doi:10.1086/377666.
Igoe, J. 2004. Conservation and Globalization: A Study of National Parks and Indigenous Communities from East Africa to South Dakota (Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth).
Ingold, T. 2000. The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling, and Skill (London: Routledge).
Jacka, J. 2007. ‘ “Our Skins are Weak”: Ipili Modernity and the Demise of Discipline’, in S. Bamford (ed.), Embodying Modernity and Postmodernity: Ritual, Praxis, and Social Change in Melanesia (Durham: Carolina Academic Press): 39-67.
Kinsley, D. 1995. Ecology and Religion: Ecological Spirituality in Cross-Cultural Perspective. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Krech III, S. 1999. The Ecological Indian: Myth and History (New York: W.W. Norton).
Kulick, D. 1992. ‘Coming Up in Gapun: Conceptions of Development and their Effect on Language in a Papua New Guinea Village’, in G. Dahl and A. Rabo (eds.), Kam-ap or Take-off: Local Notions of Development (Uppsala: Stockholm Studies in Social Anthropology): 10-34.
Lansing, S. 1991. Priests and Programmers: Technologies of Power in the Engineered Landscape of Bali (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
Nadasdy, P. 2003. Hunters and Bureaucrats: Power, Knowledge, and Aboriginal–State Relations in the Southwest Yukon (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press).
———. 2005. ‘Transcending the Debate over the Ecologically Noble Indian: Indigenous Peoples and Environmentalism’, Ethnohistory 52.2: 291-331. doi:10.1215/00141801-52-2-291.
Ntiamoa-Baidu, Y. 2008. ‘Indigenous Beliefs and Biodiversity Conservation: The Effectiveness of Sacred Groves, Taboos and Totems in Ghana for Habitat and Species Conservation’, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 2: 309-26.
Oates, J. 1999. Myth and Reality in the Rain Forest: How Conservation Strategies are Failing in West Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press).
Palmer, C. 2006. ‘Stewardship: A Case Study in Environmental Ethics’, in Berry (ed.) 2006: 63-75.
Posey, D. 1985. ‘Indigenous Management of Tropical Forest Ecosystems: The Case of the Kayapó Indians of the Brazilian Amazon’, Agroforestry Systems 3: 139-58. doi:10.1007/BF00122640.
Primack, R., and R. Corlett. 2005. Tropical Rain Forests: An Ecological and Biogeographical Comparison (Oxford: Blackwell).
Rappaport, R. 1984. Pigs for the Ancestors: Ritual in the Ecology of a New Guinea People (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2nd edn).
Redford, K. 1991. ‘The Ecologically Noble Savage’, Cultural Survival Quarterly 15: 46-48.
Redford, K., and A. Stearman. 1993. ‘Forest dwelling Native Amazonians and the Conservation of Biodiversity: Interests in Common or in Collision?’, Conservation Biology 7.2: 248-55. doi:10.1046/j.1523-1739.1993.07020248.x.
Richards, S.J. (ed.). 2007. A Rapid Biodiversity Assessment of the Kaijende Highlands, Enga Province, Papua New Guinea (Arlington, VA: Conservation International).
Robbins, J. 2004. Becoming Sinners: Christianity and Moral Torment in a Papua New Guinea Society (Berkeley: University of California Press).
———. 2006. ‘Properties of Nature, Properties of Culture: Ownership, Recognition, and the Politics of Nature in a Papua New Guinea Society’, in Biersack and Greenberg 2006: 171-91.
Robinson, J. 1993. ‘The Limits to Caring: Sustainable Living and the Loss of Biodiversity’, Conservation Biology 7.1: 20-28. doi:10.1046/j.1523-1739.1993.07010020.x.
Shearman, P., et al. 2009. ‘Forest Conversion and Degradation in Papua New Guinea, 1972–2002’, Biotropica 41.3: 379-90. doi:10.1111/j.1744-7429.2009.00495.x.
Sillitoe, P. 1996. A Place against Time: Land and Environment in the Papua New Guinea Highlands (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic).
Smith, E., and M. Wishnie. 2000. ‘Conservation and Subsistence in Small-Scale Societies’, Annual Review of Anthropology 29: 493-524. doi:10.1146/annurev.anthro.29.1.493.
Sponsel, L. 1992. ‘The Environmental History of Amazonia: Natural and Human Disturbances, and the Ecological Transition’, in Steen and Tucker 1992: 233-51.
———. 2005. ‘Noble Savage and the “Ecologically Noble” Savage’, in Taylor 2005: 1210-12.
Spring, D., and E. Spring (eds.). 1974. Ecology and Religion in History (New York: Harper Torchbooks).
Steen, H., and R. Tucker (eds.). 1992. Changing Tropical Forests: Historical Perspectives on Today’s Challenges in Central and South America (Durham: Forest History Society).
Stewart, P., and A. Strathern. 2002. Remaking the World: Myth, Mining, and Ritual Change among the Duna of Papua New Guinea (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press).
Stritecky, J. 1999. ‘Capitalist Consumerism and the Spirit of the Millennium in Rural East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea’, in C.K. Schmid (ed.), Expecting the Day of Wrath: Versions of the Millennium in Papua New Guinea (Boroko, PNG: National Research Institute): 70-79.
Taylor, B. (ed.). 2005. The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature (London: Thoemmes Continuum).
Terborgh, J. 1999. Requiem for Nature (Washington, DC: Island Press).
Tiedje, K. 2007. ‘The Promise of the Discourse of the Sacred for Conservation (and its Limits)’, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 1: 326-39.
Turnbull, C. 1961. The Forest People (New York: Doubleday & Co.).
———. 1972. The Mountain People (New York: Simon & Schuster).
Viveiros de Castro, E. 1998. ‘Cosmological Deixis and Amerindian Perspectivism’, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 4.3: 469-88. doi:10.2307/3034157.
West, P. 2006. Conservation is Our Government Now: The Politics of Ecology in Papua New Guinea (Durham: Duke University Press).
West, P., J. Igoe, and D. Brockington. 2006. ‘Parks and Peoples: The Social Impact of Protected Areas’, Annual Review of Anthropology 35: 251-77. doi:10.1146/annurev.anthro.35.081705.123308.
White Jr, L. 1967. ‘The Historical Roots of our Ecologic Crisis’, Science 155.3767: 1203-1207. doi:10.1126/science.155.3767.1203.
———. 1973. ‘Continuing the Conversation’, in I. Barbour (ed.), Western Man and Environmental Ethics: Attitudes toward Nature and Technology (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing): 55-64.
Whitney, E. 2005. ‘White, Lynn (1907–1987)—Thesis of’, in Taylor 2005: 1735-37.
Wright, R. 2007. ‘Indigenous Moral Philosophies and Ontologies and their Implications for Sustainable Development’, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 1: 92-108.
———. 2009. ‘Baniwa Art: The Baniwa Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Sustainable Development’, in A. Vilaça and R. Wright (eds.), Native Christians: Modes and Effects of Christianity among Indigenous Peoples of the Americas (Burlington, VT: Ashgate): 187-210.
Published
2010-03-19
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Jacka, J. K. (2010). The Spirits of Conservation: Ecology, Christianity, and Resource Management in Highlands Papua New Guinea. Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, 4(1), 24-47. https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v4i1.24
