LOGGING, WOMEN AND SUBMARINES - SOME CHANGES IN KAMULA MENS ACCESS TOTRANSFORMATIVE POWER

In this paper I describe how, for the Kamula, the productive elicitati on of both familiar and modem things often requires access to the tran sformative capacities of 'bush spirits'. The Kamula narratives I deal with outline how elements of modernity (such as money, logging, guns) are relocated into the domain of these spirits. By the mediation of th ese spirits, sometimes disturbing, even dangerous, aspects of modernit y are transformed and then productively transferred to Kamula men such that they can apparently more effectively negotiate the new forces th at now structure their lives. Through these narrative and magical defi nitions of agency, Kamula men become complicit in a modernity that is increasingly both the source and negation of their power.