Drawing on both their own fieldwork from 1991 to 1999 and older written sources, Stewart and Strathern explore how the Duna have remade their rituals and associated myths in response to the outside influences of government, Christianity, and large-scale economic development, specifically mining and oil prospecting. The authors provide in-depth ethnographic materials on the Duna and present many detailed descriptions of ritual practices that have been abandoned. Remaking the World is a timely contribution to the literature on agency and the making of cultural identity by indigenous peoples...

How are ethnographic knowledge and anthropological theory created out of field experiences? Spanning Papua New Guinea, Taiwan, and Scotland, and Ireland, Stewart and Strathern show how fieldwork in apparently different areas can lead to unexpected comparisons and discoveries of similarities in human cross-cultural patterns of behavior.

This book argues that the breaking and re-making of frames of analysis underlie the history of theorizing in anthropology. The authors advocate a mindful, nuanced, people-centered approach to all theorizing-one that avoids total system approaches (-isms) and suggest that theory should relate cogently to ethnography.

Explores revenge as a motivation relating to conflict and violence. Looks at Oceania, where revenge is traditionally a sacred duty to the dead whose spirits demand it. Beyond Oceania, revenge is an important hidden factor in processes of violence.