The authors present a historical picture of gender relations in Highlands New Guinea by exploring domains of imagination as revealed in courting songs, ballads, and folktales from across the Highlands but with particular reference to field areas in the western Highlands. Texts and/or translations are from a rich corpus of materials previously unpublished in English. The examples draw the reader into the imaginative world of the people, while the analytical framework sets the discussion firmly into debates within interpretive anthropology.
The aim is to re-examine the images of gender...
The authors present a historical picture of gender relations in Highlands New Guinea by exploring domains of imagination as revealed in courting so...
Two classic topics in social anthropology are combined in this work--the study of witchcraft and sorcery and the study of rumors and gossip. After revealing the importance of rumor and gossip as catalysts for accusations of witchcraft and sorcery, it demonstrates their role in the genesis of social and political violence, as seen in peasant rebellions, as well as witch-hunts. The study draws upon examples from Africa, Europe, India, Papua New Guinea, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia.
Two classic topics in social anthropology are combined in this work--the study of witchcraft and sorcery and the study of rumors and gossip. After rev...
This book suggests a bold comparative approach to broad cultural differences between Africa and Melanesia. Its theme is personhood, understood in terms of what anthropologists call embodiment. These concepts are applied to questions ranging from the meanings of spirit possession, to the logics of witchcraft and kinship relations, the use of rituals in healing, and even the impact of capitalism. Questioning common assumptions about the huge differences among these discrete areas, the contributions document surprising continuities.
This book suggests a bold comparative approach to broad cultural differences between Africa and Melanesia. Its theme is personhood, understood in term...
How do people perceive the land around them, and how is that perception changed by history? The contributors explore this question from an anthropological angle, assessing the connections between place, space, identity, nationalism, history and memory in a variety of different settings around the world. Taking historical change and memory as key themes, they offer a broad study that will appeal to a readership across the social sciences. Contributors from North America, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, and Europe explore a wide variety of case studies that includes seascapes in Jamaica; the...
How do people perceive the land around them, and how is that perception changed by history? The contributors explore this question from an anthropolog...
What is terror? What are its roots and its results -- and what part does it play in human experience and history? This volume offers a number of timely and original anthropological insights into the ways in which acts of terror -- and reactions to those acts -- impact on the lives of virtually everyone in the world today, as perpetrators, victims or witnesses. As the contributors to this volume demonstrate, what we have come to regard as acts of terror -- whether politically motivated, or state-sanctioned -- have assumed many different forms and provoked widely differing responses throughout...
What is terror? What are its roots and its results -- and what part does it play in human experience and history? This volume offers a number of timel...
This text explores the meanings and contexts in which violent actions occur. The authors build upon David Riches's concept of the triangle of violence - which examines the relationship between performers, victims and witnesses - and his proposition that violence is marked by contests regarding its legitimacy as a social act. Adopting an approach which looks at the negotiated and contingent nature of violent behaviour, Stewart and Strathern particularly stress the powerful underlying motivation for revenge and the often unacknowledged association between ideas of revenge and concepts of...
This text explores the meanings and contexts in which violent actions occur. The authors build upon David Riches's concept of the triangle of violence...
How have the Aluni Valley Duna people of Papua New Guinea responded to the challenges of colonial and post-colonial changes that have entered their lifeworld since the middle of the Twentieth-Century? Living in a corner of the world influenced by mining companies but relatively neglected in terms of government-sponsored development, these people have dealt creatively with forces of change by redeploying their own mythological themes about the cosmos in order to make claims on outside corporations and by subtly combining features of their customary practices with forms of Christianity,...
How have the Aluni Valley Duna people of Papua New Guinea responded to the challenges of colonial and post-colonial changes that have entered their li...
Building on an incipient tendency to make comparisons between Indonesian and Melanesian cultural themes, this study makes a fresh comparison of themes that interrelate ethnographies of eastern Indonesia (for example, Sumba, Flores), Irian Jaya (the Bird's Head), and the Highlands of Papua New Guinea (Melpa, Duna). The themes chosen include slavery and personhood, kinship and commoditization, cassowary myths, sky beings, witchcraft, female spirits, and historical changes.
Such a comparative sweep of themes has not been attempted before for this part of the world, and the thematic...
Building on an incipient tendency to make comparisons between Indonesian and Melanesian cultural themes, this study makes a fresh comparison of the...
