." . . a very convincing case for the refiguring of our understanding of contemporary remittance motivations. Crucial to this is the focus on sharing, as opposed to formal transaction . . . Also original and exciting is the emphasis on the deployment of 'community' as a crucial indigenous category of description and organization . . . I have not read a better or more convincing account of the category in Melanesia." - Adam Reed, University of St. Andrews

" This book] significantly advances arguments in the discipline in a number of key areas, such as the relationship between...

'Passing' is a common euphemism for the death of a person, as he or she is said to 'pass away' or 'pass on'. This open-ended saying has at its heart a notion of transformation from one state to another, which in turn grants the possibility of grasping or approximating the passage of time and the materiality of death and decay. This book begins with the idea that since all material things - whether animals, human-beings, objects or buildings - undergo some form of passing, then the specific transformation in these passages and the materiality actively given to it can offer us a grasp of...