Paper short abstract:

In PNG, people, Monsters and Ancestors live underground in social harmony and ancient power, mirroring villages, swamps, and islands above the surface. I explore this underground world and its intimate connection to those on the surface, inextricably linked through actions, relations and movement.

Paper long abstract:

In the Western Province of Papua New Guinea, a community of people live underground in a world of plenty characterised by social harmony and ancient power. Aside from the latter, their environment, practices and lifestyle mirror the villages, swamps, and islands above the surface. These 'underground people' speak Gogodala, a dialect also spoken by the villagers on the surface and communicate with those living above through dreams. In this world, the underground is a dynamic, breathing, living space, redolent with ancestral power and ability. Here, rapid movement is enabled through a series of tunnels or pathways, only open to those either living underground or creatures referred to as Monsters, who access these tunnels through the waterways on the surface. Monsters use the tunnels and other underground spaces to move at great speed between places on the surface. Ancestors also move in and out of these underground spaces, connecting these with elaborate networks of underground passages and places outside of this underground world. In this paper, I explore what/ who lives and travels beneath the surface of Gogodala villages; charting some central spaces and beings moving around and through, as well as living, underground. I also note the intimacy of relations between this underground world and people who live above, inextricably linked through actions, relations and movement.

Paper short abstract:

In this paper I describe the excavation of dangerous tapu remains by Christian Maori in 1850s Taranaki. I argue that this engagement with underground forces was central to the building of a political movement for independence in a context of colonial occupation.

Paper long abstract:

Tim Ingold, ever the romantic, has defined anthropology as the study of 'human becomings as they unfold in the weave of the world'. However, in my current research into Maori engagements with Christianity in Taranaki I have found only human struggles to dwell. Christian converts did not simply 'become' in a world that was woven like a basket but, instead, they struggled to dwell in a landscape that had, in parts, become lethal. Because the tapu remains of an earlier mode of habitation lay hidden beneath the ground, safe habitation in mid-19th century Taranaki required excavation. In this paper I describe the struggle of Maori Christians in Taranaki to dwell with and against tapu, focussing on the excavation of wahi tapu (sacred groves where pre-Christian rituals had been performed) and the unearthing of mauri (talismans) from abandoned pa (fortified settlements) in the 1850s. I argue that this engagement with underground forces was central to the building of a political movement for independence in a context of colonial occupation.

Paper short abstract:

The idea of subterranean beings pervades both the rural and urban Bhutanese socialities. In this paper, I explore the underground cosmology among the rural people in central Bhutan and how it mirrors the socioeconomic fractality of the humans above.

Paper long abstract:

The explosion in the construction activities on the surface has led to the revival of the significance of what lies underneath the ground. The realm below is conceived as the unsoiled domain of the supernatural beings who in turn are considered not only as the original but fortune-giving owners of the land to the extent that without their prior permission, Bhutanese refrain from any action that would inflict harm on them or desacralize their abodes. Such conceptions are expressed through obligatory rituals, which are all oriented towards seeking their approval and, by extension antecede the laying of the cornerstone. Drawing on my fieldwork in Zhemgang, Bhutan, this paper will examine the values of subterranean beings in general and serpent beings (naga) in particular in the context of rural villages where they are sought for wealth and ritually cajoled to be domiciled in a small structure constructed next to their houses. In doing so, I explore various classes of serpent beings with uneven powers and attributes, and their relations and values to the people who worship them. Against the backdrop of hallowed intimacy, I ask why the nagas that are deemed to be wealthy are wooable only by the rich people while the poor nagas can be ignored, avoided and chased away from their environs? Finally, by focusing on the idea of wealthy and indigent nagas, I will analyse how the subterranean beings occupying the underground spaces reflect and perpetuate the socioeconomic fractality of the humans above.

Paper short abstract:

Contemporary indigenous communities are making increasing use of representations of their traditional water serpent beings to express their cultural vitality, and promote their beliefs and values. This paper considers how serpentine stories and images are used to empower indigenous uprisings.

Paper long abstract:

In medieval Europe, Christian saints embarked upon an orgy of serpent slaying in their determination to extinguish the 'heretical' beliefs of nature religions and consign their deities to Hell. In the colonial era, settlers in Oceania, Africa and Asia sought to repress local beliefs in non-human deities, including the serpentine beings that, for many indigenous communities, manifested the elemental and creative powers of waters held within and beneath the land. In both cases, worldviews valorising reciprocal human-environmental relations and deep attachments to place were forced underground by patriarchal religions extolling human dominion over 'nature', establishing the authority of an all-powerful male deity, and imposing instrumentally coercive relationships with non-human beings and environments.

Today, as indigenous communities seek to reclaim their rights to land and water, and to critique the unsustainable lifeways of larger societies, many are making use of representations of their traditional water serpent beings. These powerful generative figures readily encapsulate and express the vitality of indigenous peoples, and their cultural ideas and values. Thus in New Zealand, taniwha arise in debates about water ownership and management; in Australia, the Rainbow Serpent resurfaces in efforts to articulate Aboriginal worldviews; in Europe, the Welsh dragon is summoned up to express a vision of Celtic identity and pre-Christian lifeways. Drawing on extensive comparative research examining water serpent beings in multiple cultural and historical contexts, this paper considers how serpentine stories and images are presented to empower indigenous uprisings and promote alternate values about human-non-human relations.

Paper short abstract:

The paper discusses competing accounts of the creation of the world of Hamtai speakers in Papua New Guinea and what lies hidden, but imagined, beneath the surface – collectively an Imaginarium of the Hamtai world – and what Hamtai speakers insist is of value.

Paper long abstract:

The speakers of the Hamtai language of the Aseki-Menyamya and Bulolo Districts of Papua New Guinea have no single account of the creation of the world, but a myriad of micro accounts in which an ancestor of each narrator meets a First Explorer – usually an Australian or German gold prospector, the Administrator of German New Guinea himself, or an ‘Australian High Commissioner’. The First Explorer, despite not speaking Hamtai language, recognises the narrator’s ancestor dominion over the land as far as the eye can see and what is underneath it. Unfortunately, his photographic proof and his map have been hidden in Canberra or Canada or Germany for many years, which explains why the narrator and his group still live in a remote and underdeveloped area.

The accounts take the form of oral history, handwritten manuscripts, type-written and word-processed documents and letters, to collectively form an Imaginarium of the Hamtai world. What lies beneath is both sacred and secret, but it is imaginable and accessible in mystical ways: in dreams, by shamans, and in modern times by exploration geologists. Mining companies have (obviously) come to the Hamtai land to reveal what lies below: riches that will at last be shared with the owners of the land.

The paper discusses what Hamtai speakers insist is of value, as revealed by their own accounts, what is missing, and what contemporary Papua New Guineans and, indeed, anthropologists might learn from them.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing on the information provided in the submissions to the independent Scientific Inquiry in Hydraulic Fracturing, this thesis aims to address the significance of underground sacred sites in Aboriginal Australia and the effects that significance has on resource contestation

Paper long abstract:

On the 27th of March 2018 the independent Scientific Inquiry into Hydraulic Fracturing of Onshore Unconventional Reservoirs in the Northern Territory released its final report, informed by almost 1300 submissions from a wide range of community groups, resource extraction companies, Aboriginal communities and individuals. The report contains 135 recommendations that, if implemented, are intended to reduce the environmental, social, health, cultural and economic risks to an acceptable level. The recommendation of significance to this thesis is 11.3 of the Aboriginal People and their Culture chapter, in which the Inquiry recommends that, 'the Sacred Sites Act be amended to protect all sub-surface feature of a sacred site'. A database of the submission data was created, categorising all submissions based on demographic information such as individual or types of corporations and their place of residence, as well as references to indigeneity and the underground. The data was analysed in order to understand the tangible or intangible nature of the heritage addressed in the report, how those ideas are expressed, and how they differ between indigenous and non-indigenous submissions. Despite indigenous submissions representing less than 4% of the total database, the cultural consideration throughout the inquiry process suggests an intercultural space between indigenous and non-indigenous people in the Northern Territory and that the significance of underground heritage in Australian Aboriginal culture meaningfully affects resource contestation with non-indigenous parties.

Paper short abstract:

A key recommendation of Scientific Enquiry into Hydraulic Fracturing in the NT is to recognise and protect subsurface features of Aboriginal sacred sites. Here scientific, resource and environmental values of 'the underground' converge or discord with Aboriginal narratives of what is known below.

Paper long abstract:

This paper considers 'the underground' in the context of the recent Scientific Enquiry into Hydraulic Fracturing in the Northern Territory (March 2018). What lies beneath the earth's surface has been calculated and documented from a scientific, resource and environmental perspective using many new technologies. For anthropologists working with Aboriginal people of the Northern Territory to protect cultural heritage, including sacred sites, understanding what lies beneath the earth's surface entails learning from Aboriginal custodians of the land, the information maintained in the contemporary telling of ancestral narratives in accordance with Aboriginal tradition. Such narratives, and associated songs and paintings recount the submerging and emerging creative forces in subterranean and surface adventures and misadventures of the ancestral figures who created the earth, its people and the laws that govern the relationship between kin groups and the land. The convergence of Aboriginal knowledge of sacred site features, such as ochre, mineral deposits, water bodies and the resource targets in the Territory is considered by some to be uncanny. This paper will consider convergence and discord in subterranean narratives and will consider how Aboriginal knowledge of the underground invites alternate ways of understanding what lies beneath in the context of sacred site protection and resource extraction and other development in the Northern Territory.

Paper short abstract:

In the McLaren Vale wine region, the development of a 'Geology Map' has served to make the subterranean visible. The Map feeds into a range of projects linking flavours to geology, with ramifications for (wine and land) values. The Map is not a neutral artefact but works to produce vineyard space.

Paper long abstract:

According to doctrines of terroir in wine, geology is agentive: rocks do things, and quality wine production is dependent on a complex relational matrix between geology, vine, climate and other physical factors, and cultural/technical interventions. In South Australia's McLaren Vale, the recent development of a regional 'Geology Map' has provided the basis for projects seeking to highlight links between geological 'place' and wine, including structured tasting programs designed to identify and promote specific winegrowing districts within the Vale (with potential for future legislation as 'subregions'). It has also been deployed as a significant tool in the response of local farmers and residents to ongoing threats of land rezoning, subdivision and suburban development stemming from McLaren Vale's location on Adelaide's metropolitan fringe. The Geology Map serves to 'surface' the subterranean, bringing rocks, soils, and geological strata into visible focus and thus setting an agenda that privileges a heterotopic and agentive underground as a source and driver of value. Identifying particular geologies as 'special' and 'unique', the map offers a corrective against the totalizing space of surveyors and land developers, encouraging people to consider the diverse productive potentials of the land beneath their feet. Yet it also provides potential for division as producers may seek monopoly rent values based their own 'favourable' geologies. As the product of a specific interplay of capital interests and scientific technologies, inclusions and omissions, the map is not neutral but an instrument aimed towards a particular construction of space, privileging and highlighting certain elements of landscape.

Paper short abstract:

Germany's Ruhr District has exited coal. Yet efforts to build a postcarbon future cannot evade the 'burdens of eternity' that 150 years of excavation leave behind. This paper asks, what might be the existential ramifications of living on hollowed ground?

Paper long abstract:

Memorialising its dense industrial infrastructure as cultural heritage, Germany's Ruhr District is trying to reinvent itself in the name of a green and blue future. A massive image overhaul has accompanied the slow exit from coal and the creation of a restored landscape at once 'wild' and civilized. However, ecological remediation that opens up and repurposes large areas of the former coal industry to the public is a surface phenomenon that remains overshadowed by so-called 'burdens of eternity'. Thousands of kilometres of mining shafts and tunnels and hundreds of thousands of holes in the ground have made the region sink by 25 metres, meaning that rising groundwater levels need to be pumped off in perpetuity. Here, the future is, literally, built on hollowed ground. This paper asks, what might be the existential ramifications of such a life-space? Mobilising a psychoanalytic of the hollow and consociates such as shallowness, depth and solidity, this is an exploration of the physiognomy of hollowed ground as metaphor and lived experience.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how the materialities of radiation unsettle the boundaries between rational and hysterical, ground and digital, risk and safety and ultimately, heaven and hell. It is based on fieldwork among Japanese radiation evacuees post Fukushima disaster.

Paper long abstract:

This paper considers the materialities and the gender of radiation. On 11 March 2011, the great earthquake shook Northern Japan. The area was soon swept away by one of the largest Tsunami that the region has ever seen. A few days later, Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant experienced meltdowns. The government swiftly announced that the situation was under control. Social media, however, was filled with warnings about the threat of radiation exposure. Because radiation is hidden underneath the ground and its long-term effects on health not known, there is no way to adjudicate the difference between the two discourses. In moments of uncertainty, women often bear the blame for any misfortune which arises from that uncertainty. Under the masculinist state's policy of reconstruction, concerns over radiation levels were labeled as feminine, hysterical and antiscientific. The prohibitory nature of public discussion had led some Japanese families to evacuate overseas and to consider permanently leaving Japan. Some of them have built digital networks of citizen groups against radiation. Based on my fieldwork with some overseas evacuees, this paper explores how the materialities of radiation unsettle the boundaries between rational and hysterical, ground and digital, risk and safety and ultimately, heaven and hell.