Social Reproduction and History in Melanesia: Mortuary Ritual, Gift Exchange, and Custom in the Tanga Islands

ISBN-13: 9780521483322 / Angielski / Miękka / 1995 / 316 str.

Robert J. Foster; Meyer Fortes; Edmund Leach

Opis

This study describes and interprets the ritual activity that follows upon death in the Tanga Islands, Papua New Guinea. Robert J. Foster shows how the performance of large-scale feasts and ceremonial exchanges both commemorate the dead and regenerate the social relations of the living. He places the rites in an historical context by demonstrating how the effects of participation in an expanding cash economy has allowed Tangans to conceive of the rites as "customary" in opposition to the new and foreign practices of "business."

Recenzje

"In short, this book will become a classic, in at least two senses: its innovations are firmly grounded in disciplinary and areal traditions, and it should provide a template for others attempting to situate ritual structures in historical contexts." Richard Parmentier, Ethnohistory

Spis treści

1. Introduction: history, alterity, and a new (Melanesian) anthropology; 2. Commoditization and the emergence of kastam; 3. Kastam, bisnis and matriliny; 4. Finishing the dead: an outline of Tangan mortuary feasts and exchanges; 5. Replacing the dead: identical exchange and lineage succession; 6. Performing lineage succession: feast giving and value-creation; 7. Performing lineage succession: transformative exchange and the power of mortuary rites; 8. Conclusion.