This essay examines changing ideas about “culture” among the Chambri of Papua New Guinea. It focuses on a transnational company’s promotion of Papua New Guinean culture in national advertising and on a Chambri politician’s diatribe against youth for “prostituting” their local culture. Whereas some anthropologists see culture as an inalienable resource invoked by indigenous peoples to resist “modernity,” the Chambri case suggests that “traditional” ideas of culture can be subtly reconfigured to support exogenous interests.
