Overview

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.

Full Product Details

Author:   Dan Moretti
Publisher:   Berghahn Books
Imprint:   Berghahn Books
ISBN:  

9781836951766

ISBN 10:   1836951760
Pages:   342
Publication Date:   01 October 2025
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of 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

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

Author Information

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.

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