berghahn New York · Oxford

Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Notes on Text
List of Abbreviations

Introduction

Part I: The Ethno-Historical and Theoretical Context

Chapter 1. How a Spirit-Infested Mountain Became a Colonial Resource Frontier and Then a Homeland
Chapter 2. A Field of Dreams: Hamtai Gold Dreams and the Anthropology of Dreaming

Part II: Analogic Dreams

Chapter 3. Mining as Gardening
Chapter 4. Mining as Procreation
Chapter 5. Mining as Marriage to the Mountain Spirits

Part III: Conjugality, Affinity and Human-Mineral Relations

Chapter 6. On the Ambivalence of Gold, Spirits, Women and Affines
Chapter 7. Inscriptive Work, Ritual Exchange and Conjugal-Affinal Respect in Human-Mineral Relations
Chapter 8. Dreams, Melanesian Perspectivism and the Fractal Morality of Mining

Part IV: Gender, Mining and Cosmic Decline

Chapter 9. Melanesian Male Rituals, Spirit Marriage and Hegemonic Masculine Perspectives on Depleting Minerals
Chapter 10. ‘Just Lies Men Use’: Women’s Counter-Perspectives on Gold and Complementary Visions of Masculinity

Conclusion: Dreams, ‘Bitter Gender’ and the Value and Values of Minerals in Melanesia and Beyond

Glossary of Mining Terms (English and Tok Pisin)
References
Index

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 Hb Published (October 2025)

eISBN 978-1-83695-177-3
web ISBN 978-1-83695-177-3

Details

“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

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.

Series: Volume 8, Lifeworlds: Knowledges, Politics, Histories

Subject: Anthropology (General) Gender Studies and Sexuality Sociology

Area: Asia-Pacific

BISAC: SOC002010 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Anthropology/Cultural & Social; SOC028000 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Women's Studies; SOC026040 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Sociology/Social Theory