Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
Loading... Stealing People's Names: History and Politics in a Sepik River Cosmologyby Simon J. Harrison
None Loading...
Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. No reviews no reviews | add a review
Belongs to Series
Among the people of Avatip, a community in the Sepik region of Papua New Guinea, the most prestigious and valued forms of wealth are personal names. In this intriguing study, Simon Harrison analyses the significance of names in the context of Avatip ritual, cosmology and concepts of the person, and shows how the Avatip system of names parallels the gift-exchange systems of many other Melanesian societies. In ritualized debates, which form the public arena of Avatip political life, rival leaders and the groups they represent struggle in oratorical contests for the possession of strategic names, and, as they do so, continually manipulate possibilities of this symbolically constituted economy, these competitive processes over the past century have been progressively egalitarian type to one based on hereditary inequality and rank. The author offers a critique of the analytical arguing that it obscures the processes of political evolution in Melanesia and disguises the fundamental similarities underlying the sociocultural diversity of the region. No library descriptions found. |
Current DiscussionsNone
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)995.3History and Geography Oceania and elsewhere Melanesia; New Guinea Papua New GuineaLC ClassificationRatingAverage: No ratings.Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |