Comments on: Male infanticide in Papua New Guinea? Get real.

By: BASTA!

BASTA! — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 06:15:37 +0000

My last comment doesn’t appear. It wasn’t so previously. A pre-emptive ban?

By: Rex

Rex — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 19:29:05 +0000

I don’t think that Diana Panta’s remarks can really be taken as a sign that this report is correct. What she appears to be saying is that she knows absolutely nothing about Gimi. This is hardly confirmation. At best her claim that there is no information about Gimi _at all_ might be construed as a rebuttal to the claim that these reports could not be correct because we would have heard about them sooner. But I don’t see how someone professing ignorance on the topic could somehow be used to argue against the statements made by an expert in the area and the Salvation Army itself both claiming that the story has been misreported.

Or if you think “we don’t know it doesn’t exist, but that doesn’t mean that it could, even though the specialists in the area claim it doesn’t” is a great argument, then I have some weapons of mass destruction to sell you.

By: BJG

BJG — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 09:24:38 +0000

Before we flap about media fetishization of PNG and conflation of one group with the entire nation, could we just pause to contemplate the anthropological fetishization of PNG and conflation of that nation with the entirety of Melanesia. The latter can be equally as guilty of ‘trotting’ the latter out as the former. If we want to see significant change in a centuries-long pattern of ‘Savage South Seas’ reportage that needs to be seriously addressed.

By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 02:10:55 +0000

I believe that email was to ASAOnet and not Alex Golub.

By: BASTA!

BASTA! — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 22:21:03 +0000

I _wish_ I could be completely convinced that this is just sloppy journalism. Firstly, Diana Panta of the University of Goroka (the geographically nearest scientific centre – am I wrong?) finds the reports not at all implausible. Another thing that keeps bothering me is what the original story quotes as supposedly exact words from the two activists:

“‘All the women folk agreed to have all male babies born killed because they have had enough of men engaging in tribal conflicts and bringing misery to them,’ they said.”

No hypothetical here, though I think I’ve read somewhere that Papuan languages tend to have elaborate aspect/tense/mood systems, so perhaps the hypothetical was lost in translation?

If it is indeed a canard, then apart from the cultural superiority s**t you mention there was another bigotry blowing air into the balooney: the “men are the root of all evil”, “women are innocent victims”, “men/boys killed, women hit the hardest” discourse. I can see radfem fingerprints all over it.

By: lorenz

lorenz — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 23:47:06 +0000

By the way, according to The Times:

The claims of infanticide, though shocking, have not surprised sociologists in Papua New Guinea

“Those tribes are so remote that whatever happens up there (in Gimi) doesn’t come out,” Diana Panta of the University of Goroka told The Times.