J K Jacka
Biographic Data
| ID | 18981 |
|---|---|
| NAME | J K Jacka |
| GIVEN NAMES | J K |
| FAMILY NAME | Jacka |
| SIGNATURE | JACKA J K |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Colorado Boulder |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0180-3828 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 178 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Violent environments and the low-carbon energy transition: Cautionary tales from Costa Rica and Papua New Guinea
Two decades on, we seek to expand Peluso and Watt's seminal 'Violent Environments' (2001) with the advent of decarbonization efforts to transition to a low-carbon future, which can have violent outcomes for residing communities. Our expanded political ecology of violence coalesces the violences of extractivism inherent in the transition, which manifests at varying tempos (slow to fast) and degrees of legibility (invisible to visible). Our researc…
Flood and Fire: Reorganizing Lives around Extreme Conditions
The intensifying warming of the planet over the past several decades is a manifestation of centuries of uneven and inequitable extractive economies. This warming is well known to be the main force driving shifts in climatological conditions and extreme weather events leading to increasingly severe impacts on planetary systems. Every year, more locations on earth are experiencing heat waves, intense droughts, longer and larger fire seasons, increa…
How the Enga Cope with Frost in the 21st Century: Food Insecurity, Migration, and Development in the Papua New Guinea Highlands
Place, Time, and Affect: Changing Landscapes around a New Guinea Mining Area
In this article, I examine the interconnections about place, time, and affect and how these have changed due to transformations in the political economy of the Porgera Valley, the site of a world-class gold mine. In particular, I am interested in the oscillations between night and day, and how each is perceived along different affective dimensions, and how the terrors of the night parallel concerns with the demise of reciprocity. In the early yea…
People: Wandakali
Eating Bushmeat Improves Food Security in a Biodiversity and Infectious Disease “Hotspot”
In the Time of Frost: El Niño and the Political Ecology of Vulnerability in Papua New Guinea
Climatic anomalies associated with El Niño bring prolonged droughts and night-time frosts that devastate subsistence gardens in the Papua New Guinea highlands. As a customary process of adaptation to the subsequent food insecurity caused by crop-destroying frosts, people migrate to lower altitude areas where kin and friends provide sustenance and social support. However, with increasing economic development and the demise of collective kin endeav…
Resource conflicts and the anthropology of the dark and the good in highlands Papua New Guinea
In this article I consider why individuals sacrifice their lives for the collective. In the Porgera Valley of highlands Papua New Guinea, young men who are called ‘Rambos’ engage in sustained tribal conflicts due to increasing social inequalities in an area that is supposedly benefiting from socioeconomic development. The opening of the Porgera Gold Mine in 1990 ushered in an era of anticipated benefits that were hoped to transform the lives of t…
Riverine Disposal of Mining Wastes in Porgera: Capitalist Resource Development and Metabolic Rifts in Papua New Guinea
Introduction: River as Ethnographic Subject
Our intention in this volume is to make an original and innovative contribution to the ethnographic record of Oceania while also contributing to global debates about rivers and fresh water. Given the historical tendency for human societies everywhere to situate themselves near rivers, lakes, streams and other sources of fresh, flowing water, one might expect to find abundant, detailed descriptions of rivers in the early ethnographic record. But t…
Island Rivers: Fresh Water and Place in Oceania
Anthropologists have written a great deal about the coastal adaptations and seafaring traditions of Pacific Islanders, but have had much less to say about the significance of rivers for Pacific island culture, livelihood and identity. The authors of this collection seek to fill that gap in the ethnographic record by drawing attention to the deep historical attachments of
The Anthropology of Mining: The Social and Environmental Impacts of Resource Extraction in the Mineral Age
This article examines the social and environmental costs of living in the mineral age, wherein contemporary global livelihoods depend almost completely on the extraction of mineral resources. Owing to the logic of extractivism-the rapid and widespread removal of resources for exchange in global capitalist markets-both developed and developing countries are inextricably entangled in pursuing resource extraction as a means of sustaining current lif…
Development conflicts and changing mortuary practices in a New Guinea mining area
In the Porgera valley of highlands Papua New Guinea, burial practices have undergone rapid transformations with the coming of Christianity in the 1960s and large-scale mining development in the 1990s. In this article, I examine the changes in mortuary practices and situate these novel practices in theories about the production of space to explore conflicts over land in an era of resource development. Graves, which shifted from remote rain forest …
How Study Design Influences the Ranking of Medicinal Plant Importance: A Case Study from Ghana, West Africa
Alchemy in the Rain Forest: Politics, Ecology, and Resilience in a New Guinea Mining Area
Uneven development in the Papua New Guinea highlands
Over the last 20 years, Papua New Guinea has been at the center of a resource development boom as mining, petroleum, and logging companies extract the rich resources of this tropical Pacific island. As 97 percent of the country is owned by customary groups who correspondingly receive benefits from extraction, resource development has the potential to integrate local communities into the global economy in beneficial ways. Often, though, this is no…
Modernity, Keywords, and Historical Authenticity in Melanesian Ethnography: A Response to Mimica
The Spirits of Conservation: Ecology, Christianity, and Resource Management in Highlands Papua New Guinea
In environmental circles, there are two long-running debates about (1) whether or not indigenous peoples are truly conservationists, and (2) whether or not Christianity is inherently inimical to conservation. In this article, I bring these two debates into dialogue by exploring the changes in resource management practices of an indigenous group in highlands Papua New Guinea, many of whom have recently converted to Christianity. In Porgera, spirit…
Kirsch, Stuart: Reverse Anthropology
Anthropos , Seite 268 - 269
Whitemen, the Ipili, and the City of Gold: A History of the Politics of Race and Development in Highlands New Guinea
Ipili speakers in the highlands of Papua New Guinea creatively use the category "whiteman" both to structure their longing for socioeconomic progress and development and to critique the very institutions associated with development that they desire. This article explores the history of Ipili-white interactions from first contact in the 1930s, through the rise of indigenous mining, and up to the present to trace how "whiteness" as a category has t…
Becoming Sinners: Christianity and Moral Torment in a Papua New Guinea Society
Emplacement and Millennial Expectations in an Era of Development and Globalization: Heaven and the Appeal of Christianity for the Ipili
Non-Western Christianity engages with capitalist development and ideas of modernization from multiple and competing perspectives. In this article, I argue that as researchers we can weave together disparate theoretical strands attempting to explain the appeal of Christianity-particularly its Pentecostal and charismatic forms-by examining indigenous notions of "salvation" that have often been overlooked in the literature. To illustrate, I examine …
Cults and Christianity among the Enga and Ipili
In this article, I examine the continuities between early‐contact cult activities and present day Christianity among the western Enga and eastern Ipili of highlands Papua New Guinea. Christians today see the cults as early attempts to ‘open the road’ for the coming of whites and missionization. Cult leaders are currently understood as prophets who had received messages from God and were sent out to herald the coming new era of social change. The …
Times Enmeshed: Gender, Space, and History among the Duna of Papua New Guinea
Times Enmeshed: Gender, Space, and History among the Duna of Papua New Guinea. Gabriele Stürzenhofecker. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. 242 pp., tables, photographs, appendix, bibliography, notes, index
Coca-Cola and kolo: Land, ancestors and development
The Anthropology of Mining: The Social and Environmental Impacts of Resource Extraction in the Mineral Age
This article examines the social and environmental costs of living in the mineral age, wherein contemporary global livelihoods depend almost completely on the extraction of mineral resources. Owing to the logic of extractivism-the rapid and widespread removal of resources for exchange in global capitalist markets-both developed and developing countries are inextricably entangled in pursuing resource extraction as a means of sustaining current lif…
Alchemy in the Rain Forest: Politics, Ecology, and Resilience in a New Guinea Mining Area
Emplacement and Millennial Expectations in an Era of Development and Globalization: Heaven and the Appeal of Christianity for the Ipili
Non-Western Christianity engages with capitalist development and ideas of modernization from multiple and competing perspectives. In this article, I argue that as researchers we can weave together disparate theoretical strands attempting to explain the appeal of Christianity-particularly its Pentecostal and charismatic forms-by examining indigenous notions of "salvation" that have often been overlooked in the literature. To illustrate, I examine …
Whitemen, the Ipili, and the City of Gold: A History of the Politics of Race and Development in Highlands New Guinea
Ipili speakers in the highlands of Papua New Guinea creatively use the category "whiteman" both to structure their longing for socioeconomic progress and development and to critique the very institutions associated with development that they desire. This article explores the history of Ipili-white interactions from first contact in the 1930s, through the rise of indigenous mining, and up to the present to trace how "whiteness" as a category has t…
Coca-Cola and kolo: Land, ancestors and development
Development conflicts and changing mortuary practices in a New Guinea mining area
In the Porgera valley of highlands Papua New Guinea, burial practices have undergone rapid transformations with the coming of Christianity in the 1960s and large-scale mining development in the 1990s. In this article, I examine the changes in mortuary practices and situate these novel practices in theories about the production of space to explore conflicts over land in an era of resource development. Graves, which shifted from remote rain forest …
Island Rivers: Fresh Water and Place in Oceania
Anthropologists have written a great deal about the coastal adaptations and seafaring traditions of Pacific Islanders, but have had much less to say about the significance of rivers for Pacific island culture, livelihood and identity. The authors of this collection seek to fill that gap in the ethnographic record by drawing attention to the deep historical attachments of
The Spirits of Conservation: Ecology, Christianity, and Resource Management in Highlands Papua New Guinea
In environmental circles, there are two long-running debates about (1) whether or not indigenous peoples are truly conservationists, and (2) whether or not Christianity is inherently inimical to conservation. In this article, I bring these two debates into dialogue by exploring the changes in resource management practices of an indigenous group in highlands Papua New Guinea, many of whom have recently converted to Christianity. In Porgera, spirit…
How Study Design Influences the Ranking of Medicinal Plant Importance: A Case Study from Ghana, West Africa
In the Time of Frost: El Niño and the Political Ecology of Vulnerability in Papua New Guinea
Climatic anomalies associated with El Niño bring prolonged droughts and night-time frosts that devastate subsistence gardens in the Papua New Guinea highlands. As a customary process of adaptation to the subsequent food insecurity caused by crop-destroying frosts, people migrate to lower altitude areas where kin and friends provide sustenance and social support. However, with increasing economic development and the demise of collective kin endeav…
Place, Time, and Affect: Changing Landscapes around a New Guinea Mining Area
In this article, I examine the interconnections about place, time, and affect and how these have changed due to transformations in the political economy of the Porgera Valley, the site of a world-class gold mine. In particular, I am interested in the oscillations between night and day, and how each is perceived along different affective dimensions, and how the terrors of the night parallel concerns with the demise of reciprocity. In the early yea…
Uneven development in the Papua New Guinea highlands
Over the last 20 years, Papua New Guinea has been at the center of a resource development boom as mining, petroleum, and logging companies extract the rich resources of this tropical Pacific island. As 97 percent of the country is owned by customary groups who correspondingly receive benefits from extraction, resource development has the potential to integrate local communities into the global economy in beneficial ways. Often, though, this is no…
Times Enmeshed: Gender, Space, and History among the Duna of Papua New Guinea
Times Enmeshed: Gender, Space, and History among the Duna of Papua New Guinea. Gabriele Stürzenhofecker. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. 242 pp., tables, photographs, appendix, bibliography, notes, index
Coca-Cola and kolo: Land, ancestors and development
Cults and Christianity among the Enga and Ipili
In this article, I examine the continuities between early‐contact cult activities and present day Christianity among the western Enga and eastern Ipili of highlands Papua New Guinea. Christians today see the cults as early attempts to ‘open the road’ for the coming of whites and missionization. Cult leaders are currently understood as prophets who had received messages from God and were sent out to herald the coming new era of social change. The …
Becoming Sinners: Christianity and Moral Torment in a Papua New Guinea Society
Emplacement and Millennial Expectations in an Era of Development and Globalization: Heaven and the Appeal of Christianity for the Ipili
Non-Western Christianity engages with capitalist development and ideas of modernization from multiple and competing perspectives. In this article, I argue that as researchers we can weave together disparate theoretical strands attempting to explain the appeal of Christianity-particularly its Pentecostal and charismatic forms-by examining indigenous notions of "salvation" that have often been overlooked in the literature. To illustrate, I examine …
Whitemen, the Ipili, and the City of Gold: A History of the Politics of Race and Development in Highlands New Guinea
Ipili speakers in the highlands of Papua New Guinea creatively use the category "whiteman" both to structure their longing for socioeconomic progress and development and to critique the very institutions associated with development that they desire. This article explores the history of Ipili-white interactions from first contact in the 1930s, through the rise of indigenous mining, and up to the present to trace how "whiteness" as a category has t…
Kirsch, Stuart: Reverse Anthropology
Anthropos , Seite 268 - 269
The Spirits of Conservation: Ecology, Christianity, and Resource Management in Highlands Papua New Guinea
In environmental circles, there are two long-running debates about (1) whether or not indigenous peoples are truly conservationists, and (2) whether or not Christianity is inherently inimical to conservation. In this article, I bring these two debates into dialogue by exploring the changes in resource management practices of an indigenous group in highlands Papua New Guinea, many of whom have recently converted to Christianity. In Porgera, spirit…
Modernity, Keywords, and Historical Authenticity in Melanesian Ethnography: A Response to Mimica
How Study Design Influences the Ranking of Medicinal Plant Importance: A Case Study from Ghana, West Africa
Alchemy in the Rain Forest: Politics, Ecology, and Resilience in a New Guinea Mining Area
Uneven development in the Papua New Guinea highlands
Over the last 20 years, Papua New Guinea has been at the center of a resource development boom as mining, petroleum, and logging companies extract the rich resources of this tropical Pacific island. As 97 percent of the country is owned by customary groups who correspondingly receive benefits from extraction, resource development has the potential to integrate local communities into the global economy in beneficial ways. Often, though, this is no…
Development conflicts and changing mortuary practices in a New Guinea mining area
In the Porgera valley of highlands Papua New Guinea, burial practices have undergone rapid transformations with the coming of Christianity in the 1960s and large-scale mining development in the 1990s. In this article, I examine the changes in mortuary practices and situate these novel practices in theories about the production of space to explore conflicts over land in an era of resource development. Graves, which shifted from remote rain forest …
Riverine Disposal of Mining Wastes in Porgera: Capitalist Resource Development and Metabolic Rifts in Papua New Guinea
Introduction: River as Ethnographic Subject
Our intention in this volume is to make an original and innovative contribution to the ethnographic record of Oceania while also contributing to global debates about rivers and fresh water. Given the historical tendency for human societies everywhere to situate themselves near rivers, lakes, streams and other sources of fresh, flowing water, one might expect to find abundant, detailed descriptions of rivers in the early ethnographic record. But t…
Island Rivers: Fresh Water and Place in Oceania
Anthropologists have written a great deal about the coastal adaptations and seafaring traditions of Pacific Islanders, but have had much less to say about the significance of rivers for Pacific island culture, livelihood and identity. The authors of this collection seek to fill that gap in the ethnographic record by drawing attention to the deep historical attachments of
The Anthropology of Mining: The Social and Environmental Impacts of Resource Extraction in the Mineral Age
This article examines the social and environmental costs of living in the mineral age, wherein contemporary global livelihoods depend almost completely on the extraction of mineral resources. Owing to the logic of extractivism-the rapid and widespread removal of resources for exchange in global capitalist markets-both developed and developing countries are inextricably entangled in pursuing resource extraction as a means of sustaining current lif…
Resource conflicts and the anthropology of the dark and the good in highlands Papua New Guinea
In this article I consider why individuals sacrifice their lives for the collective. In the Porgera Valley of highlands Papua New Guinea, young men who are called ‘Rambos’ engage in sustained tribal conflicts due to increasing social inequalities in an area that is supposedly benefiting from socioeconomic development. The opening of the Porgera Gold Mine in 1990 ushered in an era of anticipated benefits that were hoped to transform the lives of t…
People: Wandakali
Eating Bushmeat Improves Food Security in a Biodiversity and Infectious Disease “Hotspot”
In the Time of Frost: El Niño and the Political Ecology of Vulnerability in Papua New Guinea
Climatic anomalies associated with El Niño bring prolonged droughts and night-time frosts that devastate subsistence gardens in the Papua New Guinea highlands. As a customary process of adaptation to the subsequent food insecurity caused by crop-destroying frosts, people migrate to lower altitude areas where kin and friends provide sustenance and social support. However, with increasing economic development and the demise of collective kin endeav…
How the Enga Cope with Frost in the 21st Century: Food Insecurity, Migration, and Development in the Papua New Guinea Highlands
Place, Time, and Affect: Changing Landscapes around a New Guinea Mining Area
In this article, I examine the interconnections about place, time, and affect and how these have changed due to transformations in the political economy of the Porgera Valley, the site of a world-class gold mine. In particular, I am interested in the oscillations between night and day, and how each is perceived along different affective dimensions, and how the terrors of the night parallel concerns with the demise of reciprocity. In the early yea…
Flood and Fire: Reorganizing Lives around Extreme Conditions
The intensifying warming of the planet over the past several decades is a manifestation of centuries of uneven and inequitable extractive economies. This warming is well known to be the main force driving shifts in climatological conditions and extreme weather events leading to increasingly severe impacts on planetary systems. Every year, more locations on earth are experiencing heat waves, intense droughts, longer and larger fire seasons, increa…
Violent environments and the low-carbon energy transition: Cautionary tales from Costa Rica and Papua New Guinea
Two decades on, we seek to expand Peluso and Watt's seminal 'Violent Environments' (2001) with the advent of decarbonization efforts to transition to a low-carbon future, which can have violent outcomes for residing communities. Our expanded political ecology of violence coalesces the violences of extractivism inherent in the transition, which manifests at varying tempos (slow to fast) and degrees of legibility (invisible to visible). Our researc…
Geography (15 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Ethnology (11 works) · New guinea (11 works) · History (10 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (9 works) · Political science (9 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Mining and Resource Management (7 works) · Archaeology (6 works)