Creative Land

by Leach, James

• ISBN13: 9781571815569
• ISBN10: 1571815562
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-08-01
• Publisher: Berghahn Books

Summary

What is creative in kinship? How are people connected to places? James Leach answers these questions by examining the making of people and the emergence of places in a particular context. Creative Land develops a powerful idea: the formulation of "creativity" as an ongoing and integral part of kinship as environmental engagement. It amounts to a re-organization of traditional domains of anthropological knowledge (such as subsistence economics, ritual, kinship, and gender) and yields a fresh perspective on the connections people trace to one another and the outcomes of their endeavors.

Table of Contents

List of Maps, Figures, Tables, and Photographs	ix
Acknowledgements	xi
Notes on the Text	xv
Preface	xvii
Introduction	1	(1)
The Rai Coast	1	(20)
Process and Kinship	21	(12)
Kinship, Process, and Creativity	22	(4)
Cognation and Flexibility	26	(3)
An Alternative to the Genealogical Model	29	(2)
The Palem	31	(2)
Residence History and Palem	33	(24)
Hamlets Past and Present	33	(8)
Hamlets as Social Groups	41	(8)
The Labours of Lawrence	49	(3)
Complexity	52	(5)
Marrying Sisters	57	(34)
Defining Relationships	57	(18)
Myths and Explanations	75	(16)
Gardens, Land, and Growth	91	(36)
Origin Points	92	(1)
Gendered Productivity: The Tambaran	93	(7)
Households and Gardens	100	(1)
Gardening, not `Production'	101	(13)
Gardens, Land, and Substance	114	(4)
Male Continuity, Female Movement	118	(9)
Birth, Emergence, and Exchange	127	(32)
The Transactions Between Affinal Kin Focused on Children	128	(15)
Mother's Brothers in the Anthropological Literature	143	(2)
Affinal Payments and Lineality in Reite	145	(6)
Visibility and Recognition	151	(8)
Spirit, Flesh, and Bone	159	(34)
The Palem as a Body	159	(18)
Performing Places. People and Spirits as Land Made Mobile	177	(16)
Places and Bodies, Landscape and Perception	193	(18)
The Concept of Landscape in Anthropology	196	(5)
Hearing and Vision as Sensory Modalities	201	(5)
Landscape in the Nekgini Lifeworld	206	(5)
Creative Land	211	(8)
Land, Place, and Person	211	(4)
Simple Principles, Complex Process	215	(1)
Creativity	216	(3)
Glossary	219	(2)
References	221	(8)
Index	229