Common Worlds and Single Lives

by Keck, Verena

• ISBN13: 9781859731642
• ISBN10: 1859731643
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-11-01
• Publisher: Berg Pub Ltd

Summary

In Pacific societies, local knowledge, which has been accumulated over thousands of years and is irreplaceable, is rapidly disappearing. With the extinction of languages, the ability to observe and interpret the world from varying perspectives is also being lost. At the same time, an enormous body of knowledge about nature, plants and animals is vanishing. However, in parallel with this, the people of the Pacific are confronted with new modes of knowledge and newly introduced technologies through imported educational systems, missions of various denominations, and the media. They do not passively assimilate this knowledge but adopt, adapt, and apply it in a syncretistic way. These changes will have permanent effects on the individual lives of people in the region and their knowledge about themselves and their surrounding 'world'. This stimulating book tracks the course of these developments and offers revealing insights into the complexity of Pacific peoples' responses to the process of globalization.

Author Biography

Edited by Verena Keck, Institute of Ethnology, University of Heidelberg

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(32)
Verena Keck
Part I: Prologue	33	(22)
1 Reflections on Knowledge in an Oceanic Setting	33	(22)
Raymond Firth
Part II: Embodied Personhood	55	(64)
2 Body, Being and Identity in Ambonwari, Papua New Guinea	55	(16)
Borut Telban
3 On the Acquisition of Knowledge: Teaching Kinship through the Body among the Tiwi of Northern Australia	71	(24)
Andree Grau
4 Cannibalism and Compassion: Transformations in Fijian Concepts of the Person	95	(24)
Christina Toren
Part III: Changing Life Histories	119	(52)
5 A Twist of the Rope	119	(18)
Andrew Strathern
6 Biographies of Social Action: Excessive Portraits	137	(34)
Lisette Josephides
Part IV: Local Recasting of Christianity	171	(60)
7 `Praying Samoa and Praying Oui-Oui': Making Christianity Local on Lifu (Loyalty Islands)	171	(36)
Anna Paini
8 Appropriating the Other: A Case Study from New Britain	207	(24)
Monique Jeudy-Ballini
Part V: Experiencing Outside Worlds	231	(56)
9 Experiencing Outside Worlds: Tannese Labour Recruitment in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century	231	(20)
Ronald Adams
10 Intrusions into the Female Realm: The Medicalization of Human Procreation among the Kwanga in Papua New Guinea	251	(22)
Brigit Obrist van Eeuwijk
11 The Chuukese Women's Status: Traditional and Modern Elements	273	(14)
Beatriz Moral
Part VI: Appropriating New Forms of Knowledge	287	(92)
12 Showing the Invisible: Violence and Politics among the Ankave-Anga (Gulf Province, Papua New Guinea)	287	(22)
Pierre Lemonnier
13 `Big Man' and `Big Woman' in the Village -- Elite in the Town. The Iatmul, Papua New Guinea	309	(20)
Milan Stanek
Florence Weiss
14 Why Do the Tiwi Want a New Township?	329	(24)
Eric Venbrux
15 Staging a Political Challenge: The Story of Tokelau te Ata	353	(26)
Ingjerd Hoem
Part VII: Epilogue	379	(26)
16 The New Modernities	379	(26)
Marilyn Strathern
Notes on Contributors	405	(6)
Index	411