Download or read book Oral Tradition in Melanesia written by Donald Denoon and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Oral Tradition in Melanesia written by Donald Denoon and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Myths and Magic of Melanesia written by Mary R. Mennis and published by . This book was released on 2021-08-23 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE BOOK Professor Colin De'Ath and Mary R. Mennis were both doing research in the Madang area in the 1970s. While Professor Colin was working on the Gogol area researching the effects of the Trans-Gogol Timber Project on the local villagers, Mary Mennis was doing research into the culture of the coastal Madang people and changes that had occurred over the years. At that time, they collaborated and published »Merging Men and Nature: Myths of Melanesia«. The original version was published in Oral History in 1981, and recently it was decided to republish these myths to make them available to a wider readership. In this latest edition, a few modifications have been made to make the stories clearer. Also some myths and oral traditions have been added. The myths presented in this book are from Madang, Manus Island, the Sepik area, the Highlands, New Britain and the Port Moresby area of Papua New Guinea as well as two from Irian Jaya. They are grouped under categories like Origin of Pottery, Two Brother Myths; Myths about mountains and Origin Myths for ease of comparison. THE SERIES The aim is to provide a conduit for the publication of studies on the Island of New Guinea, with its two established political divisions, but will also include other associated patterns of islands. It will enable contributions from new knowledge workers--with their dissertations--and from established scholars. As there are numerous scholars who would like better coverage of the areas in which they have explored--as a tribute to the people they have worked with--as well as local scholars who understand the importance of their unique areas. It is felt that the approaches being trialed in the visual anthropology part of the series as area studies will bring a wider attention to the remarkable nature of the island. The first volumes will be on modes of communication: oral history and folklore, and the emergence of a local literature. While the representation of all disciplines is welcome, comparati

Download or read book Culture Kastom Tradition written by Lamont Lindstrom and published by [email protected]. This book was released on 1994 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book South Pacific Oral Traditions written by Ruth H. Finnegan and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the oral traditions of the South Pacific, this work demonstrates that oral media and native cultural forms are vital throughout the South Pacific. It appeals to scholars concerned with the relationships between verbal art, social change, gender, power, and social organization.

Download or read book Notes on the Cognitive Texture of an Oral Mind written by Giancarlo M. G. Scoditti and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book marks the culmination of Giancarlo M.G. Scodittis renowned series of publications on the cultural production of the northern Massim island of Kitawa, Papua New Guinea. It explores how the Nowau `creators of images conceive of the way their artistic compositions come about sketching Kitawan cognitive philosophy and aesthetic practice. Describing how for them images grow like the loops of the Nautilus shell one of natures prominant demonstrations of the logarithmic spiral and the golden section Scodittis analysis of Kitawan cognitive and artistic principles resonates with Lvi-Strausss work on myth and Kants notion of the mental schema, and makes a ground-breaking contribution to our understanding of the `oral mind.

Download or read book Oral Traditions of Southeast Asia and Oceania written by Herman C. Kemp and published by Yayasan Obor Indonesia. This book was released on 2004 with total page 718 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Social Reproduction and History in Melanesia written by Robert John Foster and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1995-04-27 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In much of Melanesia, the process of social reproduction unfolds as a lengthy sequence of mortuary rites - feast making and gift giving through which the living publicly define their social relations with each other while at the same time commemorating the deceased. In this study Robert J. Foster constructs an ethnographic account of mortuary rites in the Tanga Islands, Papua New Guinea, placing these large-scale feasts and ceremonial exchanges in their historical context and demonstrating how the effects of participation in an expanding cash economy have allowed Tangans to conceive of the rites as 'customary' in opposition to the new and foreign practices of 'business'. His examination synthesizes two divergent trends in Melanesian anthropology by emphasizing both the radical differences between Melanesian and Western forms of sociality and the conjunction of Melanesian and Western societies brought about by colonialism and capitalism.

Download or read book Social Change in Melanesia written by Paul Sillitoe and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000-04-13 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, first published in 2000, is a companion volume to An Introduction to the Anthropology of Melanesia (1998). It gives a clear and absorbing account of social change in Melanesia since the arrival of Europeans covering the history of the colonial period and the new postcolonial states. Paul Sillitoe deals with economic and technological change, labour migration and urbanisation, and formation of the modern state, but he also describes the sometimes violent reactions to these dramatic transformations, in the form of cargo cults, secession movements, and insurrections against multinational companies. He discusses development projects but brings out associated policy dilemmas, reviews developments that threaten the environment, and implications for local identity, such as romanticises 'primitive culture'. This fascinating account of social change in the pacific is addressed to students with little or no background in the region's history and development.

Download or read book Archaeologies of Island Melanesia written by Mathieu Leclerc and published by ANU Press. This book was released on 2019-08-08 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘The island world of Melanesia—ranging from New Guinea and the Bismarcks through the Solomons, Vanuatu, and New Caledonia—is characterised more than anything by its boundless diversity in geography, language and culture. The deep historical roots of this diversity are only beginning to be uncovered by archaeological investigations, but as the contributions to this volume demonstrate, the exciting discoveries being made across this region are opening windows to our understanding of the historical processes that contributed to such remarkably varied cultures. Archaeologies of Island Melanesia offers a sampling of some of the recent and ongoing research that spans such topics as landscape, exchange systems, culture contact and archaeological practice, authored by some of the leading scholars in Oceanic archaeology.’ — Professor Patrick Vinton Kirch Professor of Anthropology, University of Hawai‘i Island Melanesia is a remarkable region in many respects, from its great ecological and linguistic diversity, to the complex histories of settlement and interaction spanning from the Pleistocene to the present. Archaeological research in Island Melanesia is currently going through a vibrant phase of exciting new discoveries and challenging debates about questions that apply far beyond the region. This volume draws together a variety of current perspectives in regional archaeology for Island Melanesia, focusing on Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, New Caledonia and Papua New Guinea. It features both high-level theoretical approaches and rigorous data-driven case studies covering recent research in landscape archaeology, exchange and material culture, and cultural practices.

Download or read book Cargo Cult written by Lamont Lindstrom and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2019-03-31 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who is not captivated by tales of Islanders earnestly scanning their watery horizons for great fleets of cargo ships bringing rice, radios and refrigerators - ships that will never arrive? Of all the stories spun about the island peoples of Melanesia, tales of cargo cult are among the most fascinating. The term cargo cult, Lamont Lindstrom contends, is one of anthropology's most successful conceptual offspring. Like culture, worldview and ethnicity, its usage has steadily proliferated, migrating into popular culture where today it is used to describe an astonishing roll-call of people. It's history makes for lively and compelling reading. The cargo cult story, Lindstrom shows, is more significant than it at first appears, for it recapitulates in summary form three generations of anthropological theory and Pacific studies. Although anthropologists' enthusiasm for the notion of cargo cult has waned, it now colors outsiders' understanding of Melanesian culture, and even Melanesians' perceptions of themselves. The repercussions for contemporary Islanders are significant: leaders of more than one political movement have felt the need to deny that they are any kind of cargo cultist. Of particular interest to this history is Lindstom's argument that accounts of cargo cult are at heart tragedies of thwarted desire, melancholy anticipation and crazy unrequited love. He makes a convincing case that these stories expose powerful Western scenarios of desire itself—giving cargo cult its combined titillation of the fascinating exotic and the comfortably familiar.

Download or read book An Introduction to the Anthropology of Melanesia written by Paul Sillitoe and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998-10-08 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Introduction to the Anthropology of Melanesia is intended for undergraduate anthropology students with some grounding in the issues and ideas that inform the discipline, and for courses in Pacific Studies. Each chapter focuses on a topic common to many cultures in the region, such as the role of so-called Big Men, ancestors, male initiation, and exchange, and these ideas are fleshed out with apt ethnographic examples. Melanesia is a fascinating culture area, and has always been a popular fieldwork site for anthropologists, including W. H. R. Rivers, Bronislaw Malinowski, Margaret Mead, and Gregory Bateson. Some of the most important theoretical contributions to the subject were also first formulated with reference to Melanesian studies, and students today still learn much of their basic anthropology from Melanesian examples.

Download or read book Traditional Religion in Melanesia written by Theo Aerts and published by University of Papua New Guinea Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are various modern methods of an audience-centered reading of the Scriptures. One of them is an anthropology-inspired approach which assumes that people from these parts of the world come to the Bible with quite a different set of presuppositions, grounded in their own age-old traditions. This kind of approach goes purposely away from the well-established kind of reading which is based upon past Jewish history, ancient near-Eastern customs and archaeology, Semitic philology and so on. But without denying the value of these essentially sound segments of learning, is it really necessary that Melanesians should first plunge into Western academia in order to hear God's word? Or is it no longer true that "Greeks" must not first become "Jews" before they can become Christians? The articles gathered in Traditional Religion in Melanesia, and its companion volume Christianity in Melanesia contribute to the goal just described. They make clear that religion as such was not something that was completely new for "the pagans of the past," and that as a rule, too, they were rather selective in accepting the Christian message. This accounts for some misunderstandings, but also for some very positive ways of accepting Christianity.

Download or read book Christianity and Animism in Melanesia written by Kenneth Nehrbass and published by William Carey Publishing. This book was released on 2012-02-26 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Kenneth Nehrbass examines the interaction between traditional or animistic religion (called kastom) and Christianity in Vanuatu. First, he briefly outlines major anthropological theories of animism, then he examines eight aspects of animism on Tanna Island and shows how they present a challenge to Christianity. He traces the history of Christianity on Tanna from 1839 to the present, showing which missiological theories the various missionaries were implementing. Nehrbass wanted to find out what experiences in the lives of the islanders distinguished those who left traditional religion behind from those who held on to it. In the end, he contends that there are twenty factors of gospel response and cultural integration that determine whether an animistic background believer will be a mixer, separator, transplanter, or contextualizer.

Download or read book Melanesia written by and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Structure and Process in a Melanesian Society written by A.H. Carrier and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-10-12 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 1991. In the 1980s many anthropologists rejected the classic concern with the structure and logic of social organisation and embraced instead a concern with process, with the fluidity of events and individual strategy. Through its analysis of a Melanesian society and the ways it has changed in the twentieth century this book addresses the relationship between the classic structural approach and the more recent processual one. The society analysed is Ponam, located on a small island in Papua New Guinea. The book describes Ponam kinship and ceremonial exchange, and so compliments the authors’' analysis of Onam economic organisation in 'Wage, Tarde and Exchange in Melanesia'. Like its companion volume, this book locates Ponanm in its broader social, political and economic environment.

Download or read book History and Tradition in Melanesian Anthropology written by James G. Carrier and published by Representations Books. This book was released on 1992 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Melanesian societies, like village societies in many parts of the world, are frequently portrayed as existing in a timeless, traditional present. The effects of this view are seen not only in overall popular and academic understandings of these societies but also in more abstract debates within anthropology about the nature of kinship, exchange, or social organization. History and Tradition in Melanesian Anthropology offers an alternative view, from authors who believe that historical evidence can and must inform our understanding of contemporary cultures. This collection of original essays brings together scholars in anthropology and history. They point out ways in which the "timeless-traditionalism" approach of anthropology is inadequate. Life in the existing societies of Melanesia cannot be understood, they say, without taking firmly into account how these societies are shaped by their interactions with Western influences. In different ways all the contributors bring the history of Melanesian societies into their analyses, whether discussing the generally dismissive attitude of ethnographers toward the large numbers of Melanesian Christians; the ethnocentrism that led European observers to interpret fighting among the Melanesians solely according to whether it was for or against the Europeans; or the mechanism by which a practice such as kerekere (the soliciting of goods or services in Fijian society) became reified as a "custom." While the essays are critical of much of the anthropology that is done in Melanesia, they also exemplify a responsible, historically informed approach to the study of Melanesian societies - sober, constructive, and ideologically disinterested. Historians and anthropologists of Melanesia and the Pacific in general will find here original and enlightening work that is sure to influence the theoretical orientation of Melanesian anthropology.