Among the people of Avatip, a community in the Sepik region of Papua New Guinea, the most prestigious and valued forms of wealth are personal names. In this intriguing study, Simon Harrison analyzes the significance of names in the context of Avatip ritual, cosmology, and concepts of the person, and shows how the Avatip system of names parallels the gift-exchange systems of many other Melanesian societies. In ritualized debates, which form the arena of Avatip political life, rival leaders and the groups they represent struggle in oratorical contests for the possession of strategic names, and as they do so, continually manipulate myth, ritual and cosmology. By exploiting the inner possibilities of this symbolically constituted economy, these competitive processes over the past century have been progressively transforming the political system from a relatively egalitarian type to one based on hereditary inequality and rank. The author offers a critique of the analytical separation of economy and the symbolic order, arguing that it obscures the processes of political evolution in Melanesia and disguises the fundamental similarities underlying the sociocultural diversity of the region.
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"A short review cannot do justice to the complex and subtle analysis Harrison provides. This is a very rich ethnography that makes substantial contributions to important theoretical discussions in anthropology. Read it to appreciate it." Nancy McDowell, American Anthropologist
Book Description
Among the people of Avatip, a community in the Sepik region of Papua New Guinea, the most prestigious and valued forms of wealth are personal names. In this intriguing study, Simon Harrison analyses the significance of names in the context of Avatip ritual, cosmology and concepts of the person, and shows how the Avatip system of names parallels the gift-exchange systems of many other Melanesian societies.
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Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
The Manambu are a people of the East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea, and live along the section of the Sepik River that flows between the Hunstein Mountains and the Washkuk Hills (see Map 1). Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
senior subclans, initiatory enclosure, debating system, totemic cosmology, disputed ancestor, two subclans, other subclans, own subclan, ceremonial ranking, levee gardens, ritual grade, alliance payments, bereavement name, own agnates, mortuary payments, totemic categories, initiatory cycle, totemic ancestors, ritual sacra, uterine ties, initiatory grade, regional trading system, mythological claims, uterine siblings, uterine kin Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Big Men, Old Avatip, Sepik River, Ndakwul Wapi, Big Man, Local Government Council, Goodenough Islanders, Trobriand Islands, Great Men, Ilahita Arapesh, New Guinea Highland New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
The Manambu are a people of the East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea, and live along the section of the Sepik River that flows between the Hunstein Mountains and the Washkuk Hills (see Map 1). Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
senior subclans, initiatory enclosure, debating system, totemic cosmology, disputed ancestor, two subclans, other subclans, own subclan, ceremonial ranking, levee gardens, ritual grade, alliance payments, bereavement name, own agnates, mortuary payments, totemic categories, initiatory cycle, totemic ancestors, ritual sacra, uterine ties, initiatory grade, regional trading system, mythological claims, uterine siblings, uterine kin Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Big Men, Old Avatip, Sepik River, Ndakwul Wapi, Big Man, Local Government Council, Goodenough Islanders, Trobriand Islands, Great Men, Ilahita Arapesh, New Guinea Highland New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 100
books:
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8
books
cite this book:
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- The Kula: New Perspectives on Massim Exchange by Jerry W. Leach in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
- The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology) by Arjun Appadurai in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
- Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology) by Pierre Bourdieu in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire by Hans J. Eysenck on page 20, and Back Matter
- The Making of Great Men: Male Domination and Power among the New Guinea Baruya (Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology) by Maurice Godelier in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
See all 100 books this book cites
- Cultural Alternatives and a Feminist Anthropology: An Analysis of Culturally Constructed Gender Interests in Papua New Guinea by Frederick Errington in Back Matter
- A Place of their Own: Family Farming in Eastern Finland (Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology) by Ray Abrahams in Back Cover
- Language Ideologies: Practice and Theory (Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics) by Bambi B. Schieffelin on page 101
- Mangrove Man: Dialogics of Culture in the Sepik Estuary (Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology) by David Lipset in Back Matter
- Twisted Histories, Altered Contexts: Representing the Chambri in the World System by Deborah B. Gewertz in Back Matter
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