Bøker av Andrew Strathern

Explores the significance of expressive genres for the social processes of coping with and adjusting to change, either from outside forces or from internal ones. This book covers Austronesian and non-Austronesian speakers in the wider Indo-Pacific region.

Strathern's illuminating study of the inequalities amongst the Highland societies of Papua New Guinea is now reissued with a new preface. The five papers in this volume seek to set these inequalities into a context of long-term and recent social changes that aim to develop schemes of analysis which will permit discussion of the societies over extended periods of time.

Addresses a wide range of questions relevant to the history of anthropology and its importance for contemporary issues. Drawing on his own research, Strathern advances the call for holistic models of human behaviour which reconceptualise the relationship between body and mind.

In a postmodern era in which culture has been dismissed by many anthropologists as a reification, this study argues for cultural holism by showing how symbolic, psychological, religious and linguistic factors have shaped Melpa responses to political and economic crises.

Presents a wide range of discussions and theorizing about ritual. This title covers definitional questions, issues of interpretation, meaning, and function, and a roster of ethnographic and analytical topics, covering classic themes such as ancestor worship and sacrifice, initiation, gender, healing, social change, and shamanic practices.

In the Mount Hagen area of central New Guinea, warfare has been replaced since the arrival of the Europeans by a vigorous development of moka, a competitive ceremonial exchange of wealth objects. The exchanges of pigs, shells and other valuables are interpreted as acting as a bond between groups, and as a means whereby individuals, notably the big-men, can maximize their status.