Yali's Question

by Errington, Frederick Karl

• ISBN13: 9780226217468
• ISBN10: 0226217469
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-12-01
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

Yali's Questionis the story of a remarkable physical and social creationRamu Sugar Limited (RSL), a sugar plantation created in a remote part of Papua New Guinea. As an embodiment of imported industrial production, RSL's smoke-belching, steam-shrieking factory and vast fields of carefully tended sugar cane contrast sharply with the surrounding grassland. RSL not only dominates the landscape, but also shapes those culturally diverse thousands who left their homes to work there. To understand the creation of such a startling place, Frederick Errington and Deborah Gewertz explore the perspectives of the diverse participants that had a hand in its creation. In examining these views, they also consider those of Yali, a local Papua New Guinean political leader. Significantly, Yali features not only in the story of RSL, but also in Jared Diamond's Pulitzer Prize winning world history Guns, Germs, and Steela history probed through its contrast with RSL's. The authors' disagreement with Diamond stems, not from the generality of his focus and the specificity of theirs, but from a difference in view about how history is madeand from an insistence that those with power be held accountable for affecting history.

Author Biography

Frederick Errington is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at Trinity College. Deborah Gewertz is the G. Henry Whitcomb Professor of Anthropology at Amherst College. They are authors of four previous books together, most recently Emerging Class in Papua New Guinea.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	vii
Foreword	ix
Acknowledgments	xiii
Introduction: On Avoiding a History of the Self-Evident and the Self-Interested	1	(20)
What Do They (Should They) Want?	21	(22)
Factories in Fact and Fancy	43	(22)
The Peopling of a Place and the Placing of People	65	(20)
Clansman, Family Man, and Family-of-Man Man at RSL	85	(24)
The Life of Expatriates: Setting the Standards	109	(29)
Replacing Expatriates with Papua New Guineans	138	(28)
On Landowners, Outgrowers---and Just a Little Respect	166	(33)
On the Road, Mari Style	199	(25)
Hewers of Wood and Drawers of Water	224	(29)
Conclusion: On Listening	253	(8)
Notes	261	(30)
References	291	(14)
Index	305