Exchanging the Past: A Rainforest World of Before and After

by Knauft, Bruce M.

• ISBN13: 9780226446356
• ISBN10: 0226446352
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-08-01
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

Twenty years ago, the Gebusi of the lowland Papua New Guinea rainforest had one of the highest homicide rates in the world. Bruce M. Knauft found then that the killings stemmed from violent scapegoating of suspected sorcerers. But by the time he returned in 1998, homicide rates had plummeted, and Gebusi had largely disavowed vengeance against sorcerers in favor of modern schools, discos, markets, and Christianity. In this book, Knauft explores the Gebusi's encounter with modern institutions and highlights what their experience tells us more generally about the interaction between local peoples and global forces. As desire for material goods grew among Gebusi, Knauft shows that they became more accepting of and subordinated by Christian churches, community schools,and government officials in their attempt to benefit from them--a process Knauft terms "recessive agency." But the Gebusi also respond actively to modernity, creating new forms of feasting, performance, and music that meld traditional practices with Western ones, all of which Knauft documents in this fascinating study.

Author Biography

Bruce M. Knauft is the Samuel C. Dobbs Professor of Anthropology at Emory University. He is the author of four previous books, most recently Genealogies for the Present in Cultural Anthropology and From Primitive to Postcolonial in Melanesia and Anthropology. His edited volume Critically Modern: Alternatives, Alterities, Anthropologies is currently in press.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Prelude	1	(10)
A World of Before and After	11	(40)
Sorcerers of the Past	51	(17)
The Severed Head and Other Affairs, 1982--98	68	(16)
The Guards of Nomad	84	(35)
The Demise of Sorcery's Revenge	119	(21)
The New Spirit	140	(34)
School Bells and the Energy of Hard Benches	174	(29)
The Corners in the Round	203	(33)
Subaltern Modern	236	(13)
Afterword	249	(2)
Notes	251	(26)
References	277	(20)
Index	297