Bøker i Studies in Melanesian Anthropology-serien

In the most original and ambitious synthesis yet undertaken in Melanesian scholarship, Marilyn Strathern argues that gender relations have been a particular casualty of unexamined assumptions held by Western anthropologists and feminist scholars alike. The book treats with equal seriousness-and with equal good humor-the insights of Western social science, feminist politics, and ethnographic reporting, in order to rethink the representation of Melanesian social and cultural life. This makes The Gender of the Gift one of the most sustained critiques of cross-cultural comparison that anthropology has seen, and one of its most spirited vindications.

This is an ethnography of the Mekeo of Papua New Guinea. Based on 20 years of fieldwork, this detailed study of Mekeo esoteric knowledge, cosmology, and self-conceptualizations recasts accepted notions about magic and selfhood.

The Tolai are among the most distinctive of Papua New Guinea's indigenous peoples. For all their success in the pursuit of modernity, the Tolai remain traditional in their attitudes toward death, the cultural elaboration of which colors almost every aspect of their existence.In his new book, A. L. Epstein develops an emotional profile of the Tolai, contending that societies are distinguished as much by the shape of their emotional life as they are by their social arrangements and cultural styles. Epstein describes a wide range of mourning ceremonies and other more and less public occasions. By investigating not only the words that stand for emotions but also the way affect enters into and informs people's conduct, he charts a new course for ethnography that seeks to integrate the study of the emotions into anthropological analysis.

Examines the often overlooked role of gossip and rumor in creating power in small Melanesian communities. This title suggests that our understanding of both Melanesian leadership and the power of words to construct social reality is greatly enhanced by attention to gossip and rumor.

Until the middle of this century, the Western world knew little about the peoples of the Central Highlands of what is now Papua New Guinea, and vice versa. This title shows how the anthropological climate of the times shaped or influenced analyses; how the Highlands experience may have changed the author's theoretical orientation.

A collection of essays by anthropologists on the subject of ritualized homosexuality. Their studies in cross-cultural variations in homosexual behaviour in a non-Western culture area indicate that contemporary theories of sex and gender development need revision.