While scholars have long been aware of changing currency regimes in Melanesia, subtle ethnographic study has been rare. This collection of original essays fills this gap, exploring money and its social dynamic in eight different Melanesian communities. Editors David Akin and Joel Robbins synthesize the research and, in a penetrating analysis, describe new models for thinking about money.
David Akin is an independent scholar living in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He has spent five years living in the Kwaio area of Malaita in the Solomon Island s since 1979, most recently in 1997. His publications about Kwaio include studies of spirits, politics, oral history, suicide, art, and educational development. He is writing a book about how Kwaio religious change is generating new forms of gender-based inequality.
Joel Robbins is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University o f California, San Diego. His research among the Urapmin of Papua New Guinea has resulted in publications on a variety of subjects: Christianity, millennialism, cultural conceptions of the environment, development, and other topics. He is currently working on a monograph focusing on the relation of ritualm and space. David Akin is an independent scholar living in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He has spent five years living in the Kwaio area o f Malaita in the Solomon Islands since 1979, most recently in 1997, and he i s writing a book about how Kwaio religious change is generating new forms of gender-based inequality.
Contributors: Karen Brison, Union College; Doug Dalton, Longwood College; Robert J. Foster, University of Rochester; Jane I. Guyer, Northwestern University; John Liep, University of Copenhagen, Denmark; Edward LiPuma, University of Miami; Mark S. Mosko, University of Auckland, New Zealand; Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart, University of Pittsburgh; and the editors.
