Social Reproduction and History in Melanesia

Klappentext In this study Robert J. Foster constructs an ethnographic account of mortuary rites in the Tanga Islands, Papua New Guinea, placing these large scale feasts and ceremonial exchanges in their historical context and demonstrating how the effects of participation in an expanding cash economy have allowed Tangans to conceive of the rites as 'customary' in opposition to the new and foreign practices of 'business'. Zusammenfassung Mortuary rites are a feature of social reproduction in much of Melanesia! and this study combines both ethnographic and historical approaches to describe and interpret the large-scale feasts and ceremonial exchanges of gifts that follow upon death in the Tanga Islands! Papua New Guinea. Inhaltsverzeichnis 1. Introduction: history, alterity, and a new (Melanesian) anthropology; 2. Commoditization and the emergence of kastam; 3. Kastam, bisnis and matriliny; 4. Finishing the dead: an outline of Tangan mortuary feasts and exchanges; 5. Replacing the dead: identical exchange and lineage succession; 6. Performing lineage succession: feast giving and value-creation; 7. Performing lineage succession: transformative exchange and the power of mortuary rites; 8. Conclusion.

Product details

• Authors: Robert J. Foster, Robert John Foster
• Assisted by: Meyer Fortes (Editor), Edmund Leach (Editor)
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 27.04.1995
• EAN: 9780521483322
• ISBN: 978-0-521-48332-2
• Dimensions: 150 mm x 230 mm x 18 mm
• Series: Cambridge Studies in Social an
• Subject: Social sciences, law, business > Social sciences (general)