By Sabine Jell-Bahlsen and Georg Jell

To be presented at the International Seminar on Resources, Tribes and State organized by ARUNACHAL INSTITUTE OF TRIBAL STUDIES (AITS) at the RAJIV GANDHI UNIVERSITY, RONO HILLS, ITANAGAR, Arunachal Pradesh, India, February13-15, 2012.

Papua New Guinea is the independent part of the world’s second largest island, located in the Pacific Ocean just North of Australia, and known as “a mountain of gold in a sea of oil.” Our paper is based on research that began during our year-long residency at the country’s only Technical University in Lae. We are discussing several issues related to the nation’s gold resources and their exploitation: varied mining technologies and locations, the environmental impact, economics, human cost and gender issues, indigenous culture versus international corporate culture, state interferences, and urban development. One example is the industrial port city of Lae, founded during the gold rush of the 1920ies that inaugurated rapid urban development. Once gloriously known as the “Pearl of the Pacific”, the town experienced administrative expansion and suffered from the subsequent exhaustion of nearby gold mines entailing a reverse development.

Montreal Convention Center 514A (Palais des congrès de Montréal)
Sabine Jell-Bahlsen (Ogbuide Films)

Okoroshi 2009—a critical incident and cultural conditioning in the art of masquerade.

This paper was inspired when a Nigerian-born colleague asked me for an example of a “critical incident” as an example in an advisory paper aimed at Germans working in Nigeria. I am recalling and reflecting on my encounter with masked men on a SE Nigerian highway and an Okoroshi masquerade at Izombe in 2009, a critical incident and a paradox at the same time. While local dignitaries’ apologized for holding a “pagan masquerade,” I am examining a prolific spiritually motivated African art form that is also a cultural mechanism aimed at social integration; masquerades are demonized and attacked by post-colonial proselytizers, yet, they also represent and appropriate modernity. While it is critical for foreigners to learn about Nigerian cultures, the Igbo people can also learn from their own and their history. In view of Nigeria’s increasingly precarious safety situation and the misappropriation of masks by criminals, this paper calls for a more in-depth study, unravelling and rediscovery of the dynamics and goals of a significant masquerade.

See more of: RELIGION, DOGMA AND SPIRITUALITY ACROSS AFRICA: CONSERVATISM AND CHANGE
See more of: Association for Africanist Anthropology