This book presents a detailed account of the lives of the Baruya, a tribal society in highlands of Papua New Guinea and will interest scholars and students of anthropology.
Rituals of Manhood provides some of the most dramatic and richly textured accounts of ritual passages known to anthropologists of the late twentieth century. When in an earlier time anthropologists and sociologists described collective initiation rituals, the political and gender aspects of these practices were seldom underscored. Today, the power relationships of the body and domination, and the social arena of gender politics are widely regarded as critical to the cultural meaning and interpretation.
From April to August 1961, Michael Rockefeller served as sound recordist and photographer on a multidisciplinary expedition to highland New Guinea. In five months he produced over 4,000 black and white negatives. In this catalogue of over 75 photographs, Bubriski explores Rockefeller's journey into the culture and community of the Dani people.
‘...a fascinating account of one of the most important figures in PNG's first 40 years of Independence.’ – Sean Dorney, journalistBorn on a remote island in Papua New Guinea to a migrant Chinese father and indigenous mother, Julius Chan overcame poverty, discrimination, and family tragedy to become one of Papua New Guinea’s longest-serving and most influential politicians.His 50-year career, including two terms as Prime Minister, encompasses a crucial period of Papua New Guinea’s history, particularly its coming of age from an Australian colony to a leading democratic nation in the South Pacific. Chan has played a significant role during these decades of political, economic and social change. Playing the Game offers unique insights into one of the world’s most ancient and complex tribal cultures. It also explores the vexed issues of increasing corruption, government failure, and the unprecedented exploitation of its precious natural resources.In the first memoir by a Papua New Guinean leader in forty years, Sir Julius Chan explores his decision in 1997 to hire a private military force, Sandline International, to quell the ongoing civil crisis in Bougainville. This controversial deal sparked worldwide outrage, cost Sir Julius the prime ministership and led to ten years in the political wilderness. He was re-elected as Governor of New Ireland in 2007, aged 68, a seat he has held ever since.Playing the Game is an authentic and compelling account of Chan’s private and political life, and offers a rare insight into how the modern nation of Papua New Guinea came to be, the vision and values it was founded on, and the extraordinary challenges it faces in the 21st century.
Explorations into Highland New Guinea, 1930-1935 is the diary of five years spent in hot pursuit--not of honor and glory, but of excitement and riches--by one such adventurer, Michael "Mick" Leahy, his brothers Jim and Pat, and friends Mick Dwyer and Jim Taylor.
Fully revised edition of a book first published in 1990. Includes new prologue and author's note. An exploration of Papua New Guinea's past and present including analysis of the country's independence in 1975, the Bougainville crisis, and relations with Indonesia. Includes index. Author is an ABC correspondent who has reported on Papua New Guinea for more than a decade. He won a Walkley Award for his coverage of the Aitape tsunami disaster in 1998, and was awarded an AM in the 2000 Australia Day Honours list.
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.
The myths of the Gimi, a people of the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, attribute the origin of death and misery to the incestuous desires of the first woman or man, as if one sex or the other were guilty of the very first misdeed. Working for years among the Gimi, speaking their language, anthropologist Gillian Gillison gained rare insight into these myths and their pervasive influence in the organization of social life. Hers is a fascinating account of relations between the sexes and the role of myth in the transition between unconscious fantasy and cultural forms. Gillison shows how the themes expressed in Gimi myths—especially sexual hostility and an obsession with menstrual blood—are dramatized in the elaborate public rituals that accompany marriage, death, and other life crises. The separate myths of Gimi women and men seem to speak to one another, to protest, alter, and enlarge upon myths of the other sex. The sexes cast blame in the veiled imagery of myth and then play out their debate in joint rituals, cooperating in shows of conflict and resolution that leave men undefeated and accord women the greater blame for misfortune.