Dr John Cox is a Social Anthropologist and Development Studies specialist. John has twenty-five years’ experience in Pacific Islands countries working as a volunteer, NGO program manager, development consultant, researcher and educator. His work addresses social and political change in the Pacific and focuses on how class, gender and religious identity in shapes developmental citizenship and nationalism.
His PhD (University of Melbourne, 2012) won the Australian Anthropological Society’s Prize for Best PhD Thesis. John’s doctoral research took mass Ponzi schemes as a vantage point from which to observe social and cultural change in contemporary Melanesia, particularly in relation to religion, financial aspiration and developmental nation-making. This research was published in October 2018 as a scholarly monograph with Indiana University Press.
John has published on contemporary politics and developmental challenges in Melanesia, including new communications technologies, sorcery accusations and medical services, gender, livelihoods and patronage politics. John has contributed to the Developmental Leadership Program’s Gender and Politics in Practice research and studies of locally led development for the Pacific Leadership Program and the PNG Australia Partnership. He has also worked with emerging scholars from Fiji on the social, political and religious implications of disasters and climate change. Together with Social Work academics at La Trobe University, he has researched gambling harms among Pacific Islander migrants in Mildura and two other Victorian communities.
John has recently worked on an ARC Laureate project addressing climate adaptation in small island states and is currently engaged as Lead Research Consultant on a World Bank climate resilience project in Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands.
ORCID 0000-0002-4028-5149
His PhD (University of Melbourne, 2012) won the Australian Anthropological Society’s Prize for Best PhD Thesis. John’s doctoral research took mass Ponzi schemes as a vantage point from which to observe social and cultural change in contemporary Melanesia, particularly in relation to religion, financial aspiration and developmental nation-making. This research was published in October 2018 as a scholarly monograph with Indiana University Press.
John has published on contemporary politics and developmental challenges in Melanesia, including new communications technologies, sorcery accusations and medical services, gender, livelihoods and patronage politics. John has contributed to the Developmental Leadership Program’s Gender and Politics in Practice research and studies of locally led development for the Pacific Leadership Program and the PNG Australia Partnership. He has also worked with emerging scholars from Fiji on the social, political and religious implications of disasters and climate change. Together with Social Work academics at La Trobe University, he has researched gambling harms among Pacific Islander migrants in Mildura and two other Victorian communities.
John has recently worked on an ARC Laureate project addressing climate adaptation in small island states and is currently engaged as Lead Research Consultant on a World Bank climate resilience project in Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands.
ORCID 0000-0002-4028-5149
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Scholarly Books by John Cox
This collection is a major contribution to academic and political debates about the perverse effects of inequality, which now ranks among the greatest challenges of our time. The inspiration for this volume derives from the breadth and depth of Martha Macintyre’s remarkable scholarship. The contributors celebrate Macintyre’s groundbreaking work, which exemplifies the explanatory power, ethical force and pragmatism that ensures the relevance of anthropological research to the lives of others and to understanding the global condition.
Fast Money Schemes uses in-depth interviews with investors, newspaper accounts, and participant observation to understand the scheme’s appeal from the point of view of those who invested and lost, showing that organizers and investors alike understood the scheme as a way of accessing and participating in a global economy. John Cox delivers a “post-village” ethnography that gives insight into the lives of urban, middle-class Papua New Guineans, a group that is not familiar to US readers and that has seldom been a focus of anthropological interest. The book’s concern with understanding the interweaving of morality, finance, and aspirations shared by a global cosmopolitan middle class has wide resonance beyond studies of Papua New Guinea and anthropology.
Academic Journal Articles by John Cox
This paper seeks to explore the apparent gap between liberal intellectuals and populist Pentecostal practice by considering the dynamics of fast money schemes in Papua New Guinea (PNG). These Ponzi schemes spread through Christian churches both Pentecostal and mainline, using the language of prosperity theology. Their success indicates a broad reach of these ideas that includes some more liberal Papua New Guinean intellectuals and makes them a “mainstream” phenomenon within PNG. My anthropological analysis of middle class Christian investors in fast money schemes indicates deeper and more philanthropic moral engagements than is commonly thought possible by critics of the prosperity gospel who see it as motivated by individualistic greed.
renderings of the Bible, but they also reflect an understanding of Israel as a modern, technologically
advanced nation. As middle-class Papua New Guineans reflect on the failures of national development
since gaining independence from Australia, they express ambivalence about the appropriateness of
Western models of development for the Papua New Guinean context. However, the influx of Asian
investment is also seen as lacking, or even threatening; therefore, Asian models of development also fail
to offer an appealing hope for the future. In this paper, I argue that these racialised understandings of
modernity represent a ‘post-colonial racial triangle’, a discursive field within which the moral implications
of development are understood and debated. Within this triangle, Melanesians are thought to
have ‘culture’ and (Christian) ‘morality’ but lack ‘development’. Australians or ‘whitemen’ are thought
to have ‘development’ and ‘morality’ but to lack ‘culture’. ‘Asians’ are thought to have ‘development’
and ‘culture’ but to lack (Christian) morality. Taking this moral framing of race into account, Israel
emerges as a possible aid donor with the credentials to reconcile these three positions as it is seen to be
the possessor of ‘development’, ‘culture’, and ‘morality’.
moments where each has defined the other as its opposite. In the contemporary Pacific, not least among
evangelical Christians, gambling is often understood as wasteful entertainment and even as an irresponsible
vice. Investment on the other hand is seen as a productive activity for both individuals and
society at large. These moral concerns draw on discourses of proprietorship of the self, of money and of
risk. This paper explores moral attitudes to gambling/investment among middle-class investors in a mass
Ponzi scheme in Papua New Guinea (PNG) and charts new valorizations of risk and investment as
components of the construction of modern ‘financial selves’.
Keywords: gambling, investment, fraud, Christianity, Papua New Guinea.
Book Chapters by John Cox
This collection is a major contribution to academic and political debates about the perverse effects of inequality, which now ranks among the greatest challenges of our time. The inspiration for this volume derives from the breadth and depth of Martha Macintyre’s remarkable scholarship. The contributors celebrate Macintyre’s groundbreaking work, which exemplifies the explanatory power, ethical force and pragmatism that ensures the relevance of anthropological research to the lives of others and to understanding the global condition.
Fast Money Schemes uses in-depth interviews with investors, newspaper accounts, and participant observation to understand the scheme’s appeal from the point of view of those who invested and lost, showing that organizers and investors alike understood the scheme as a way of accessing and participating in a global economy. John Cox delivers a “post-village” ethnography that gives insight into the lives of urban, middle-class Papua New Guineans, a group that is not familiar to US readers and that has seldom been a focus of anthropological interest. The book’s concern with understanding the interweaving of morality, finance, and aspirations shared by a global cosmopolitan middle class has wide resonance beyond studies of Papua New Guinea and anthropology.
This paper seeks to explore the apparent gap between liberal intellectuals and populist Pentecostal practice by considering the dynamics of fast money schemes in Papua New Guinea (PNG). These Ponzi schemes spread through Christian churches both Pentecostal and mainline, using the language of prosperity theology. Their success indicates a broad reach of these ideas that includes some more liberal Papua New Guinean intellectuals and makes them a “mainstream” phenomenon within PNG. My anthropological analysis of middle class Christian investors in fast money schemes indicates deeper and more philanthropic moral engagements than is commonly thought possible by critics of the prosperity gospel who see it as motivated by individualistic greed.
renderings of the Bible, but they also reflect an understanding of Israel as a modern, technologically
advanced nation. As middle-class Papua New Guineans reflect on the failures of national development
since gaining independence from Australia, they express ambivalence about the appropriateness of
Western models of development for the Papua New Guinean context. However, the influx of Asian
investment is also seen as lacking, or even threatening; therefore, Asian models of development also fail
to offer an appealing hope for the future. In this paper, I argue that these racialised understandings of
modernity represent a ‘post-colonial racial triangle’, a discursive field within which the moral implications
of development are understood and debated. Within this triangle, Melanesians are thought to
have ‘culture’ and (Christian) ‘morality’ but lack ‘development’. Australians or ‘whitemen’ are thought
to have ‘development’ and ‘morality’ but to lack ‘culture’. ‘Asians’ are thought to have ‘development’
and ‘culture’ but to lack (Christian) morality. Taking this moral framing of race into account, Israel
emerges as a possible aid donor with the credentials to reconcile these three positions as it is seen to be
the possessor of ‘development’, ‘culture’, and ‘morality’.
moments where each has defined the other as its opposite. In the contemporary Pacific, not least among
evangelical Christians, gambling is often understood as wasteful entertainment and even as an irresponsible
vice. Investment on the other hand is seen as a productive activity for both individuals and
society at large. These moral concerns draw on discourses of proprietorship of the self, of money and of
risk. This paper explores moral attitudes to gambling/investment among middle-class investors in a mass
Ponzi scheme in Papua New Guinea (PNG) and charts new valorizations of risk and investment as
components of the construction of modern ‘financial selves’.
Keywords: gambling, investment, fraud, Christianity, Papua New Guinea.
investment, compensation and development assistance and so project imaginings of a prosperous society onto existing narratives of nationhood. The second section concentrates on multi- level marketing schemes, microfinance and other business oriented programmes, focusing on their projects of entrepreneurial self-formation.
Vella Lavella, a relatively under-developed part of Western Province in
Solomon Islands. My purpose is to draw attention to some small-scale
initiatives of women (and men) in rural Melanesia that show proactive
(albeit contested) engagements with processes of changing gender relations there. The point is not to romanticise grassroots development by claiming that the kindergarten described provides a model of transformative feminist praxis. Rather, by bringing a humble village kindergarten into view, I hope to open up more options for thinking about the dynamics of social change in Solomon Islands and to unsettle the commonly accepted view that ideologies of male dominance are supported by kastom and are so firmly entrenched in rural areas as to be uncontestable.
special editions of their respective journals, including two special editions dedicated to disasters (Pacific Journalism Review and a double edition of Anthropological Forum) and one on the theme ‘Possessing Paradise’ (The Contemporary Pacific). Interested readers may like to explore the excellent contributions of the other authors represented in these collections. This research brief concludes with some suggestions for disaster management practitioners.
The paper focuses on the experiences of three women: President Hilda Heine from the Marshall Islands; the Honorable
Fiame Naomi Mata’afa from Samoa; and Dame Carol Kidu from Papua New Guinea. All have won senior leadership positions in their respective governments. As the ‘first’ women to reach the apex of parliamentary politics in the Pacific, their stories offer valuable insights for donors and other reformers seeking to address gender imbalance both in the Pacific and beyond.
analysis of popular “political social media” Facebook pages in these three countries. The findings of the study suggest that social media is playing a role in facilitating citizen engagement with governments, making governments accountable and providing a means for citizens to be informed, to discuss and share views on political matters. However, social media usage is evolving quite differently in these three countries and factors such as high levels of militarism (Fiji), high levels of corruption (Solomon Islands) and also rapid ICT development (Vanuatu) have contributed towards shaping the potential of social media as a democratic enabler and political tool in these
countries.
Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Timor- Leste.
My own contribution discusses these issues in dialogue with anthropological studies of Pentecostalism in Africa.
reconfigured in Papua New Guinea and TimorLeste.
U-Vistract claimed to be a Christian reform of global finance systems that would deliver abundant prosperity to Papua New Guineans. U-Vistract cultivated a moral vision of its middle-class investors as compassionate Christian patrons whose coming wealth would deliver “development” to a nation disillusioned with social inequality and the postcolonial state.
U-Vistract investors emerge from this study as morally engaged members of a transnational Christian civil society. This is a surprising conclusion to draw from studying fraud but it is all the more surprising in Papua New Guinea where anthropological interest has historically constructed the “village” as the central place where social meanings are generated. Here, urban Melanesians demonstrate moral and relational sensibilities that combine global aspirations for prosperity with Papua New Guinean disillusionment with the nation. In doing so, perhaps a more individualistic rendering of Melanesia emerges but these are individuals who are also more cosmopolitan in sentiment.
See full article in Asia Pacific Viewpoint https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/apv.12260
They say they have reports of individuals in Honiara falsely offering Australian Government scholarships for study in Australia and they want people to be careful of being ripped off.
And there are similar warnings in Vanuatu, where scammers have targeting seasonal workers, offering to them help speeding up their applications to work in Australia or New Zealand and sometimes claiming they'll help fund their travel arrangements.
John Cox from La Trobe University has recently written a book about scams, particularly in PNG.
He says authorities across the region need to do more to educate people because while many scams are usually one-offs, there are more elaborate ones operating, especially in PNG, than can ruin people's lives.
Duration: 15min 53sec
Broadcast: Wed 30 Jan 2019, 7:00am
DES MOINES, Iowa — A former Iowa investment adviser was sentenced Wednesday to up to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to felony theft for taking more than $330,000 from seven people, mostly friends and acquaintances, claiming he was safely investing it in a foreign bank that paid high returns.
In Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands, witchcraft and sorcery accusations appear to be proliferating and, in many cases, leading to horrific violence, torture and murder of those thought to be sorcerers. Our contribution to the debates about sorcery-related violence is to see it as the result of poverty and failing services. We reject interpretations of sorcery accusations and violence as grounded in the ancient traditional culture of Melanesia. Instead, we see the resurgence of sorcery as an effect of poverty and social inequality, particularly the neglect of medical services and training.
Sorcery accusations are largely associated with untimely or unanticipated deaths, therefore the contest between these ways of thinking and biomedical understandings of disease and illness is important to examine. In this presentation, we argue that the explanatory power of biomedicine in PNG and Solomon Islands is hampered by several factors, not least poor access to and resourcing of medical services. Reinvigoration of medical training and service provision is crucial to demonstrating the efficacy of biomedicine and improving health outcomes in Melanesia, as well as combating the spread of competing understandings of illness and disease that give rise to maltreatment, social division, misogyny and violence.
Papua New Guinea's resources boom could leave the country more susceptible to fraudsters and ponzi schemes, according to new research by the Australian National University.
John Cox has been studying the effect of fast money schemes like the U-Vistract scheme a decade ago, and why so many members of PNG's educated middle class fall for them.
He told Jamie Tahana that over 500 million kina has been lost to such schemes since 1998.
JOHN COX: I guess one thing I want to say at the start is that people fall for these kind of scams all over the world. You know, Australians send a lot of money to Nigeria, a lot of Americans fell for the Bernie Madoff scam so I guess these kinds of scams happen wherever money goes and wherever finance flows. So I'm not saying that Papua New Guineans are more gullible than else. So what I've discovered from the interviews that I've done with lots of Papua New Guineans is there's an element of greed but underneath it all there's also a really strong moral dimension to it.
JAMIE TAHANA: Just take us through what you've found with this research. Because it started with this thing in Bougainville didn't it?
JC: Yeah, the biggest scam was called U-Vistract and it's still kind of running out of Bougainville. So it was set up by Bougainvillians and spread through church networks, it spread through professional groups and it was really able to present itself as a way to make fast money and I guess the way these scams operate - they pay a few people out at the beginning, usually high level people so everybody knows them, everybody hears a story that this person made 10 thousand and the word gets around and people flood in and eventually they can't pay anymore and so they had to make explanations as to why. So I guess I looked at 'how can this scam keep going for 15 years and hasn't paid anybody since the year 2000?' But part of the stories these people started to tell their investors was 'look, it's not us. The government's stopped us from paying you, we've got our money overseas in a bank account in Singapore or somewhere and we want to transfer it into PNG but the government won't allow us to because they're corrupt, or because they're jealous of us' and that kind of stuff. So they're able to play on peoples lack of trust in the PNG state and manipulate them in that way.
JT: We do have a lot of development projects going on right now in PNG, especially with the mineral and resource projects going on right now. Does this make them kind of more susceptible?
JC: The resource projects certainly do create expectations that everybody should be wealthy, so what I'm hearing from the people that I speak to is 'PNG's a rich country we shouldn't need to have aid programmes, we shouldn't have poor people here, there's something wrong with our system' and they often blame it on corruption, sometimes they'll blame it on the Australian colonial history, but more often it becomes a what we call a negative nationalist account. They say 'we're underdeveloped it's because our politicians are corrupt.' What I'd say is background conditions don't necessarily create scams in themselves. So this U-Vistract scam really was a very, very ingenious and well thought-out attempt to defraud hundreds of thousands of people and that had an organisational structure, it had networks of influence that really drew people in and made itself seem real to them for quite a long time.
Researchers from Australia's National University have found in the past 16 years, more than half a billion kina - or around $A230 million - has been lost to fast money schemes in PNG.
John Cox has done extensive research to uncover just why money scams are so successful in PNG, and who's behind them.
The paper focuses on the experiences of three women: President Hilda Heine from the Marshall Islands; the Honorable Fiame Naomi Mata’afa from Samoa; and Dame Carol Kidu from Papua New Guinea. All have won senior leadership positions in their respective governments. As the ‘first’ women to reach the apex of parliamentary politics in the Pacific, their stories offer valuable insights for donors and other reformers seeking to address gender imbalance both in the Pacific and beyond.