Download or read book In the Absence of the Gift written by Anders Emil Rasmussen and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2015-09-01 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By adopting ideas like “development,” members of a Papua New Guinean community find themselves continuously negotiating what can be expected of a relative or a community member. Nearly half the people born on the remote Mbuke Islands become teachers, businessmen, or bureaucrats in urban centers, while those who stay at home ask migrant relatives “What about me?” This detailed ethnography sheds light on remittance motivations and documents how terms like “community” can be useful in places otherwise permeated by kinship. As the state withdraws, Mbuke people explore what social ends might be reached through involvement with the cash economy.
Download or read book Mediating and Remediating Death written by Dorthe Refslund Christensen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-29 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the ritual object which functions as a substitute for the dead - thus acting as a medium for communicating with the ’other world’ - to the representation of death, violence and suffering in media, or the use of online social networks as spaces of commemoration, media of various kinds are central to the communication and performance of death-related socio-cultural practices of individuals, groups and societies. This second volume of the Studies in Death, Materiality and Time series explores the ways in which such practices are subject to ’re-mediation’; that is to say, processes by which well-known practices are re-presented in new ways through various media formats. Presenting rich, interdisciplinary new empirical case studies and fieldwork from the US and Europe, Asia, The Middle East, Australasia and Africa, Mediating and Remediating Death shows how different media forms contribute to the shaping and transformation of various forms of death and commemoration, whether in terms of their range and distribution, their relation to users or their roles in creating and maintaining communities. With its broad and multi-faceted focus on how uses of media can redraw the traditional boundaries of death-related practices and create new cultural realities, this book will appeal to scholars across the social sciences and humanities with interests in ritual and commemoration practices, the sociology and anthropology of death and dying, and cultural and media studies.
Download or read book Materialities of Passing written by Peter Bjerregaard and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-17 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘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 otherwise precarious temporalities. It examines how human beings strive to relate to the temporal dimension of death and decay, by giving new shape and direction to being and by examining its natural transformations. Focusing on the materiality of passing, and thereby the relationship between embodiment, temporality and death, Materialities of Passing offers rich case studies from Europe, Papua New Guinea, South Africa and the Russian Far East for exploring the material, spatial and directional aspects of the very interface between life and death. As such, it will appeal to scholars of anthropology, death studies, archaeology, philosophy and cultural studies.
Download or read book Objects and Imagination written by Øivind Fuglerud and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2015-02-01 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the wide interest in material culture, art, and aesthetics, few studies have considered them in light of the importance of the social imagination - the complex ways in which we conceptualize our social surroundings. This collection engages the “material turn” in the arts, humanities, and social sciences through a range of original contributions on creativity in diverse global and contemporary social settings. The authors engage with everyday objects, art, rituals, and ethnographic exhibitions to analyze the relationship between material culture and the social imagination. What results is a better understanding of how the material embodies and influences our idea of the social world.
Download or read book Like Fire written by Theodore Schwartz and published by ANU Press. This book was released on 2021-07-01 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like Fire chronicles an indigenous movement for radical change in Papua New Guinea from 1946 to the present. The movement’s founder, Paliau Maloat, promoted a program for step-by-step social change in which many of his followers also found hope for a miraculous millenarian transformation. Drawing on data collected over several decades, Theodore Schwartz and Michael French Smith describe the movement’s history, Paliau’s transformation from secular reformer and politician to Melanesian Jesus, and the development of the current incarnation of the movement as Wind Nation, a fully millenarian endeavour. Their analysis casts doubt on common ways of understanding a characteristically Melanesian form of millenarianism, the cargo cult, and questions widely accepted ways of interpreting millenarianism in general. They show that to understand the human proclivity for millenarianism we must scrutinise more closely two near-universal human tendencies: difficulty accepting the role of chance or impersonal forces in shaping events (that is, the tendency to personify causation), and a tendency to imagine that one or one’s group is the focus of the malign or benign attention of purposeful entities, from the local to the cosmic. Schwartz and Smith discuss the prevalence of millenarianism and warn against romanticising it, because the millenarian mind can subvert rationality and nourish rage and fear even as it seeks transcendence. ‘Like Fire consummates remarkable longitudinal ethnographic research on the Paliau Movement in Papua New Guinea, pursued from the 1950s into the 1990s by Theodore Schwartz, with Michael French Smith as his sometime assistant, and updated by Smith in 2015. The theoretical arguments are highly provocative and the book is well written and fascinating throughout. Like Fire poses important questions about the driving forces and contours of Pacific Island history and the place in it of cargo cults and other millenarian movements.’ —Aletta Biersack, Professor Emerita, University of Oregon ‘Like Fire synthesises old, but inaccessible, and new material on an important and long-lasting indigenous Melanesian movement, while making extensive use of the wider literature on cargo cults and millenarianism. I find the theorising in this book both very original and an important contribution to the debates on Melanesian religion, cargo cults, and millenarianism more generally. As the authors state, the topic of millenarianism has great relevance because of its ubiquity in the contemporary world.’ —Ton Otto, Professor of Anthropology, Aarhus University, Denmark, and James Cook University, Australia
Download or read book Becoming a Garamut Player in Baluan Papua New Guinea written by Tony Lewis and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2018-04-19 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The garamut is a log idiophone that is found in many of the coastal and island areas of Papua New Guinea. The instrument’s primary use is as a speech surrogate and in some regions the garamut is also used in large ensembles to play complex music for dancing. In Baluan Island, within the Manus Province, this style of garamut playing is comparatively highly developed. This book follows the author’s processes and methods in learning to play the music of the garamut, to the level at which he became accepted as a garamut player by the people of Baluan. Lewis argues that analysis is essential in learning to play the rapid tempi and complex rhythms of Baluan garamut music, in a cultural context where there is no formal teaching process for the music. The transcription and analysis of the Baluan garamut repertoire is the centrepiece of this study, reflecting the cognitive structures of the learning process, and revealing the inner workings of the music’s complexity as well as a striking beauty of form and structure. The book concludes with reflections on the process of a ‘cultural outsider’ becoming a garamut player in Baluan and on the role of musical analysis in that process, on the ethnomusicologist’s role in transmission of the music, and on the nature of continuity and change in a musical society such as Baluan.
Download or read book The State and Its Enemies in Papua New Guinea written by Alexander Wanek and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-11 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of nation-building processes in the young state of Papua New Guinea, and of opposition to these in one of the country's peripheral provinces, Manus. Intense resistance to Lucifer (the state) is offered there by Wind Nation, the old Paliau Movement made famous by Mead and Schwartz.
Download or read book Mirrors of Passing written by Sophie Seebach and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2018-08-01 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Without exception, all people are faced with the inevitability of death, a stark fact that has immeasurably shaped societies and individual consciousness for the whole of human history. Mirrors of Passing offers a powerful window into this oldest of human preoccupations by investigating the interrelationships of death, materiality, and temporality across far-flung times and places. Stretching as far back as Ancient Egypt and Greece and moving through present-day locales as diverse as Western Europe, Central Asia, and the Arctic, each of the richly illustrated essays collected here draw on a range of disciplinary insights to explore some of the most fundamental, universal questions that confront us.
Download or read book Food and Agriculture in Papua New Guinea written by R. Michael Bourke and published by ANU E Press. This book was released on 2009-08-01 with total page 665 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Agriculture dominates the rural economy of Papua New Guinea (PNG). More than five million rural dwellers (80% of the population) earn a living from subsistence agriculture and selling crops in domestic and international markets. Many aspects of agriculture in PNG are described in this data-rich book. Topics include agricultural environments in which crops are grown; production of food crops, cash crops and animals; land use; soils; demography; migration; the macro-economic environment; gender issues; governance of agricultural institutions; and transport. The history of agriculture over the 50 000 years that PNG has been occupied by humans is summarised. Much of the information presented is not readily available within PNG. The book contains results of many new analyses, including a food budget for the entire nation. The text is supported by 165 tables and 215 maps and figures.
Download or read book In the Absence of the Gift written by Anders Emil Rasmussen and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By adopting ideas like “development,” members of a Papua New Guinean community find themselves continuously negotiating what can be expected of a relative or a community member. Nearly half the people born on the remote Mbuke Islands become teachers, businessmen, or bureaucrats in urban centers, while those who stay at home ask migrant relatives “What about me?” This detailed ethnography sheds light on remittance motivations and documents how terms like “community” can be useful in places otherwise permeated by kinship. As the state withdraws, Mbuke people explore what social ends might be reached through involvement with the cash economy.
Download or read book Papua New Guinea Rural Development Handbook written by and published by Virago Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides invaluable information on natural resources, population, agricultural access to services, cash income, land potential, child malnutrition and disadvantaged people in PNG.
Download or read book Technology and Society Reader written by Peter B. Heller and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 2012-03-15 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These case studies illustrate the mutual, reciprocal impact of technology on one hand and the social sciences, including government policy, on the other. The text suggests that advanced technology is not always compatible with the different settings in emerging societies with other geographic, economic, social, cultural, and political environments.
Download or read book New Guinea Research Bulletin written by and published by . This book was released on 1971 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Religious Movements in Melanesia Today written by and published by . This book was released on 1983 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book New Guinea Research Unit Bulletin written by and published by . This book was released on 1971 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book If Everyone Returned The Island Would Sink written by Kirstie Petrou and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2020-02-01 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on the small island of Paama, Vanuatu, and the capital, Port Vila, this book presents a rare and recent study of the ongoing significance of urbanisation and internal migration in the Global South. Based on longitudinal research undertaken in rural ‘home’ places, urban suburbs and informal settlements over thirty years, this book reveals the deep ambivalence of the outcome of migration, and argues that continuity in the fundamental organising principles of cultural life – in this case centred on kinship and an ‘island home’ – is significantly more important for urban and rural lives than the transformative impacts of migration and urbanisation.
