Money, Mayhem and the Beast: Narratives of the World's End from New Ireland (PAPUA NEW GUINEA)

Abstract

This article discusses the relationship between money, the nation, and new imaginings of apocalypticism in Papua New Guinea. Robert Foster has argued that money played an important role in the Australian administration's efforts to promote a sense of nation at the end of the colonial period. I explore the effects of the new imaginings beyond the nation that are occurring as Christian apocalypticism becomes a dominant framework for interpreting the world. New meanings and values are being attached to money, resulting in the destabilization of the strong link between money and nation that was observed by Foster. I argue that, within this new world‐view, money is losing its symbolic potency, that new forms of identity are emerging, and that people's attachment to the nation is being weakened.

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