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 Texts and/or translations are from a rich corpus of materials previously unpublished in English.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...
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...
Arrow Talk makes a significant contribution to the understanding of Melanesian culture and contemporary sociopolitical issues in Papua New Guinea. In a post modern era in which culture has been dismissed by many anthropologists as a reification, this book makes a cogent argument for cultural holism by showing how symbolic, psychological, religious and linguistic factors have combined to shape Melpa responses to the political and economic crises they have had to face in the waning years of the millennium. This analysis also contributes notably to the development of anthropological...
Arrow Talk makes a significant contribution to the understanding of Melanesian culture and contemporary sociopolitical issues in Papua New Gu...
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...
This book considers in depth the emergent theme of concerns over bodily fluids in health and wellness through an examination of a rich set of ethnographic materials from the Pacific islands of New Guinea. The particular structure of the book draws together otherwise disparate observations made by ethnographers on ideas of the body. It helps to reveal how these are related to ideas of sickness and curing, of witchcraft, of cannibalism, of gender relations, and of ecology and ritual. It facilitates cross-cultural comparisons with other parts of the world, as well as making clear the...
This book considers in depth the emergent theme of concerns over bodily fluids in health and wellness through an examination of a rich set of ethno...
For courses in Social Organization, Kinship, and Cultural Ecology. Kinship has made a come-back in Anthropology. Not only is there a line of noted, general, introductory works and readers in the topic, but theoretical discussions have been stimulated both by technological changes in mechanisms of reproduction and by reconsiderations of how to define kinship in the most productive ways for cross-cultural comparisons. In addition, kinship studies have moved away from the minutiae of kin terminological systems and the "kinship algebra" often associated with these, to the...
For courses in Social Organization, Kinship, and Cultural Ecology. Kinship has made a come-back in Anthropology. Not only is there...
