Mangrove Man: Dialogics of Culture in the Sepik Estuary

by David Lipset

• ISBN13: 9780521564342
• ISBN10: 0521564344
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1997-11-13
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This is the first modern ethnography of the Murik, a relatively large and important community settled on the Sepik River estuary in Papua New Guinea, and the only book of a non-Western culture drawing on the conceptual framework of the Russian literary theorist, Mikhail Bakhtin. Murik men, who exercise political power, conceptualize women as the source of nurture, generosity and love. This conceptualization creates for men a kind of existential problem, and their claim to sustain and reproduce society requires them to appropriate the nurturant qualities of women. So they must, in some sense, model certain aspects of themselves after women. A 'maternal schema' or poetics of the female body', therefore underlines the sociocultural patterns of these societies. This schema expresses itself in a range of societal domains: in kinship relations, life-cycle rituals, the men's cults, and in disputes and processes of conflict resolution. The issues discussed tie in with some of the major contemporary debates in the social sciences: the relationship between ideas of male and female power.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	xi	(3)
List of tables	xiv	(1)
Acknowledgments	xv
1 Introduction	1	(16)
PART I: DIALOGICS OF THE MATERNAL SCHEMA AND THE UTERINE BODY	17	(118)
2 A predicament in space	17	(36)
3 The maternal schema and the uterine body	53	(26)
4 The heraldic body	79	(30)
5 Who succeeded Ginau?	109	(26)
PART II: DIALOGICS OF THE MATERNAL SCHEMA AND THE COSMIC BODY OF MAN	135	(82)
6 A body more carnal	135	(42)
7 The sexuality and aggression of the cosmic body of man	177	(40)
PART III: DIALOGICS OF THE MATERNAL SCHEMA IN SOCIAL CONTROL	217	(60)
8 Conflict and the reproduction of society	217	(47)
9 Social control and law	264	(13)
Glossary	277	(12)
Notes	289	(11)
References	300	(27)
Index	327