Sensing Disaster by Matthew Lauer;

Author:Matthew Lauer;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780520392083
Publisher: University of California Press

ALCHEMIC VULNERABILITIES

Jerry Jacka, in Alchemy in the Rainforest, provides an illuminating and richly embroidered account of development and change in the highlands of Papua New Guinea.52 He invokes the imagery of “alchemy” to suggest that change and transformations transpiring on colonial frontiers involve material, conceptual, linguistic, and ecological redistributions and transmutations that parallel the practices of medieval alchemists who sought to alter metals into gold. Alchemists employed special elixirs not only to convert stones into precious metals, they also applied them to the body to prolong life, enlighten the soul, and improve the human condition. It is this alchemy that Jacka traces through an examination of Pogera, a region famous for its enormous alluvial gold deposits. The glittery deposits in the riverbeds of the region became a source of eye-popping wealth when a large mine was established in 1990. Pogerans, however, benefited little from it. Nevertheless, the inhabitants of the region continued to avidly engage with and seek out the wealth and technology of outsiders. As on Simbo, foreign objects such as steel were initially absorbed through ritual and other means, but later, as Pogerans learned that outsiders desired gold, they began panning for the alluvial riches. They, like Simboans, adopted Christianity for spiritual improvement. In a far more extreme case than Simbo, however, Pogerans simultaneously desired and actively pursued the benefits of capitalism and development while also lamenting the erosion of some of their most cherished practices such as reciprocal exchange. The vulnerabilities spawned by colonial and postcolonial processes produced not just “social” or “ecological” shifts but alchemic “socioecological” transformations. The large-scale mining, conversion to Christianity, and later the arrival of firearms transformed the Pogerans’ world and undercut their capacity for reciprocity so drastically that they referred to their new condition as a situation in which “the land is ending.” Rather than having fertile crops, healthy people, and placated spirit beings, the Pogeran world underwent a radical and tragic breach.

As we have learned in this chapter, the transformations have been much less dramatic on Simbo. Without significant resources such as minerals or timber that attract outsiders, Simboans to a large degree have been able to reshape and adapt to colonial impositions, capitalist relations, and new cosmologies. But similar to Pogera, when Simboans refract and appropriate external influences through their own practices, this produces uneven, complex, and unexpected outcomes, many of which were dramatized during the tsunami. As we have learned in this chapter, the emergence of twentieth-century vulnerabilities joined with the 2007 tsunami in such a way that some Simboans, tragically, remained in the path of the tsunami.

But in another surprising twist, a wave of social solidarity took hold during the immediate aftermath of the tsunami while survivors lived in the relocation camps high up in the hills. This flowering of sharing surprised many and was interpreted as an effervescence of kastom, those pre-Christian practices such as sharing and mutual self-help that, unlike Pogerans, Simboans continue to engage in to compose their world. To understand these varied and contradictory

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