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Many male coffee farmers in the highlands of Papua New Guinea believe they have a right to sex with their spouse without regard to her wishes. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative data, I argue that such sexual violence is best framed within local understandings of what marriage involves - an implicit contract which conveys rights and responsibilities to each partner in a marriage. Changes brought by modernity are transforming traditional understandings of conjugality, causing some discrepancies in partners' understanding of what they have agreed to. Too many women continue to endure marital rape, but some signs of improvement are discernible.

This paper is based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork among the Lelet of New Ireland Province, Papua New Guinea. It draws on qualitative interviews with Pentecostal Christians intended to examine their understanding of Christianity and how this relates to their cultural practices - in this case, how their Pentecostalism affects their therapeutic beliefs and practices. The frequent observation that therapeutic repertoires are becoming less discrete is substantiated by the Lelet case, for in their search for therapy, the Lelet often cross the borders of different repertoires, seeing no contradiction, for example, between combining a vernacular therapy with biomedicine. With the advent of Pentecostalism, the issue has become far more complex. The Lelet therapeutic culture remains pluralist, but the research shows that Lelet Pentecostals are increasingly viewing their own Christian-based forms of healing as in competition with other therapies, especially vernacular therapies. This competitive outlook has brought a demonization of vernacular therapies, which are labelled 'satanic' and their use discouraged. In fact, Pentecostalism is refashioning the realm of therapy: rather than border crossing and mixing of therapeutic repertoires, the situation is increasingly dominated by notions of mutual exclusivity. In order to comprehend the full complexity of medical pluralism, it is now necessary not only to examine how the borders of the different therapeutic repertoires are blurred, destabilized or reconfigured but also how they may be demarcated and policed. In other words, we argue that medical pluralism is being eroded by its interaction with Pentecostalism., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

This paper draws on qualitative research in Jiwaka Province, in the highlands of Papua New Guinea (PNG), to examine the changing nature of marriage in that context. In particular, it examines how changes in the practice of brideprice have been associated with an increase in intimate partner violence. Violence, a relational process, is to be understood in the context of the customary unequal power relations between men and women. It is argued that men in the highlands of PNG see any gain in power for women as a loss for themselves, and so actively resist it. Men who see their power over women challenged resort to the discourse of brideprice, arguing that the payment of brideprice gives them absolute authority over wives. A good understanding of the norms that sanction violence is a vital step in developing interventions to prevent violence.

The recognition that HIV prevention materials need to be adapted to local cultures is not often sufficiently understood and applied. Counter discourses and determined disputation about the best means of HIV prevention show that success is not simply a matter of mindfully translating globally sanctioned knowledge and presenting it to receptive audiences. Beliefs contrary to global AIDS knowledges will not be displaced inevitably by scientific facts. As this study of born-again Christians in Papua New Guinea shows, there is incommensurability between the globalized approach preferred by the government and the approach of these Christians. The answer may lie in two words: respect and dialogue.