ideas and attitudes about madness in Papua new guidea

Michael Goddard

Research program: Mobility and Exclusion

I am a social anthropologist who has been engaged in research in Papua New Guinea (PNG) since the mid 1980s. My early fieldwork was in the upper Kaugel Valley, in the Western Highlands Province, where I researched local ideas about, and attitudes towards, madness (the valley people regarded madness as a social disorder, in comparison with Western conceptions of madness as mental illness). I have published several articles from this research over the years, and am currently revising my work on the subject into a book which I hope to complete by mid-year (working title: Out of Place).