Research Seed Grant | 2006-2007
Making Value in the Pacific Tropics: The Case of New Guinea Crocodiles
by Paige West (Barnard Anthropology)
This project examines the ways in which multiple actor groups find, assess, and make value with regard to two species of crocodiles on the island of New Guinea. Humans evaluate their surroundings in ways that fix social, political, and economic value to ecosystem processes, the socio-cultural idea of biological diversity, and to individual species. The New Guinea fresh-water crocodile (Crocodylus novaeguineae) and the Australian salt-water crocodile (Crocodylus prosus) are two species to which multiple actors in Papua New Guinea attach value and in which they find meaning. This project traces the value creation and meaning making associated with these animals by examining the systems of evaluation employed by indigenous people who harvest the animals, scientists who study them, business people who farm them and run adventure tours based on them, tourists who come to view them and hunt them, and policy makers who write the legislation that regulates their harvest and trade.
