Dr Monica Minnegal
BA PhD (Qld)
Contact
E: mmam@unimelb.edu.au
T: +61 3 8344 4708
Academic Profile
Monica's primary research interests concern the articulation of social and ecological systems, and the processes that shape change in the ways that people understand relationships to each other and the land. She has documented the changing socio-ecology of people in the interior lowlands of Papua New Guinea for more than a decade, exploring the impacts of modernity and environmental catastrophe on their understandings and practices. Comparative study of neighbouring groups provides a basis for contextualising these changes within a broader understanding of emerging complexity within the region.
She is currently working with Peter Dwyer on an anthropological study of commercial fishers in Victoria. This research investigates the effects of different forms of engagement with the sea, with markets and with management on organisation of social relationships, community cohesion and reproduction, and fisher identity.
Research interests
- ecological and economic anthropology
- symbolic and political ecology
- social and environmental change
- fishing and fisheries management
- Papua New Guinea
- Australia
Teaching
- Knowing Nature (IDF)
- Working with Value
- Culture Change and Protest Movements
- Redefining Nature
Publications
- 2008 M Minnegal & PD Dwyer. ‘Managing risk, resisting management: Stability and diversity in a southern Australian fishing fleet’ Human Organization 67(1): 97-108.
- 2008 M Minnegal & PD Dwyer. ‘Fire, flood, fish and the uncertainty paradox’ The Australian Journal of Anthropology 19(1): 77-81.
- 2008 PD Dwyer, TJ King & M Minnegal. ‘Managing shark fishermen in southern Australia: A critique’ Marine Policy 32(3): 263-73. [Available on-line at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2007.06.003]
- 2007 M Minnegal & PD Dwyer. ‘Foragers, farmers and fishers: Responses to environmental perturbation’ Journal of Political Ecology 14: 34-57. [Available at http://jpe.library.arizona.edu]
- 2007 PD Dwyer & M Minnegal. ‘Social change and agency among Kubo of Papua New Guinea’ Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13: 545-562.
- 2007 M Minnegal & PD Dwyer. ‘News makers, trouble makers or spirit mediums? A reflection on doing anthropology ‘at home’’. Australian Anthropological Society Newsletter 107: 9-10.
- 2007 M Minnegal & PD Dwyer. ‘Money, meaning and materialism: A Papua New Guinean case history’ The University of Melbourne SSEE Working Papers in Development, No. 2/2007, pp.1-27.
- 2006 M Minnegal & PD Dwyer ‘Fertility and social reproduction in the Strickland-Bosavi region’ in SJ Ulijaszek (ed) Population, Reproduction and Fertility in Melanesia. Berghahn: 110-135.
- 2006 PD Dwyer & M Minnegal. ‘The good, the bad and the ugly: Risk, uncertainty and decision-making by Victorian fishers’ Journal of Political Ecology 13: 1-23.
- 2006 PD Dwyer & M Minnegal. ‘Dignity or disgrace? The (latest) mismanagement of Commonwealth fisheries’ Ausmarine 28 (9): 16-17.
- 2005 M Minnegal (ed). Sustainable Environments, Sustainable Communities: Potential Dialogues between Anthropologists, Scientists and Managers. The University of Melbourne, SAGES Research Papers No. 21. Available online at: http://www.pasi.unimelb.edu.au/research/SAGES/RP-21-Sustainable-Environments-Communities.pdf
- 2005 M Minnegal. ‘Talking and listening: anthropologists as part of the problem’ in M Minnegal (ed) Sustainable environments, sustainable communities: potential dialogues between anthropologists, scientists and managers. The University of Melbourne, SAGES Research Paper No. 21: 1-9.
- 2005 PD Dwyer & M Minnegal 'Person, place or pig: animal attachments and human transactions in New Guinea' in J Knight (ed) Animals in person: cultural perspectives on human-animal intimacy. Berg: 37-60.
- 2003 M Minnegal, T King, R Just & PD Dwyer. ‘Deep identity, shallow time: Sustaining a future in Victorian fishing communities' The Australian Journal of Anthropology 14(1): 53-71.
- 2003 PD Dwyer, R Just & M Minnegal. 'A sea of small names: Fishers and their boats in Victoria, Australia' Anthropological Forum 13(1): 5-26.
- 2003 PD Dwyer & M Minnegal. ‘Social dimensions of commercial fisheries: Some implications for management’ Professional Fisherman 26(2): 20.
- 2001 M Minnegal & PD Dwyer 'Intensification, complexity and evolution: insights from the Strickland Bosavi region' Asia Pacific Viewpoint 42(2/3): 269-285.
- 2000 M Minnegal & PD Dwyer. 'A sense of community: sedentary nomads of the interior lowlands of Papua New Guinea' People and culture in Oceania 16: 43-65.
- 2000 P Dwyer & M Minnegal. 'El Nino, Y2K and the "short fat lady": drought and agency in a lowland Papua New Guinean community' The Journal of the Polynesian Society 109(3): 251-272.
- 2000 M Minnegal & PD Dwyer. 'Responses to a drought in the interior lowlands of Papua New Guinea: a comparison of Bedamuni and Kubo-Konai' Human Ecology 28(4): 493-526.
- 1999 M Minnegal & PD Dwyer. 'Rereading relationships: changing constructions of identity among Kubo of Papua New Guinea' Ethnology 38(1): 59-80.
- 1999 M Minnegal & PD Dwyer. 'The transformation of use-rights: a comparison of two Papua New Guinean societies' Journal of Anthropological Research 55(3):361-383.
- 1998 M Minnegal & PD Dwyer. ‘Intensification and complexity in the interior lowlands of Papua New Guinea: A comparison of Bedamuni and Kubo’ Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 17(4): 375-400.
- 1998 PD Dwyer & M Minnegal. ‘Waiting for company: Ethos and environment among Kubo of Papua New Guinea’ Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 4: 23-42.
- 1997 M Minnegal. ‘Consumption and production: sharing and the social construction of use-value’ Current Anthropology 38: 25-48.
- 1997 M Minnegal & PD Dwyer. ‘Women, pigs, God and evolution: Social and economic change among Kubo people of Papua New Guinea’ Oceania 68: 47-60.
- 1997 PD Dwyer & M Minnegal. ‘Sago games: Cooperation and change among sago producers of Papua New Guinea’ Evolution and Human Behavior 18: 89-108.
- 1996 M Minnegal. ‘A necessary unity: the articulation of social and ecological explanations of behaviour’ Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 2: 141-158.