South coast New Guinea cultures : history, comparison, dialectic
The communities of south coast New Guinea were the subject of classic ethnographies, and fresh studies in recent decades have put these rich and complex cultures at the center of anthropological debates. Flamboyant sexual practices such as ritual homosexuality have attracted particular interest. In the first general book on the region, Dr. Knauft reaches striking new comparative conclusions through a careful ethnographic analysis of sexuality, the status of women, ritual and cosmology, political economy, and violence among the region's seven major language-culture areas. The findings suggest new Melanesian regional contrasts and provide for a general critique of the way regional comparisons are constructed in anthropology. Theories of practice and political economy as well as postmodern insights are drawn upon to provide a generative theory of indigenous social and symbolic development
Print Book, English, 1993
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [England], 1993
xii, 298 pages : illustrations, map ; 24 cm
9780521418829, 9780521429313, 0521418828, 0521429315
25629339
pt. 1. Grounding. 1. Theoretical and ethnographic context. 2. Historical background and regional configuration
pt. 2. Critique. 3. Sexuality in the regional analysis of south New Guinea. 4. The analytic legacy of homosexual emphasis: language, subsistence, and political economy. 5. Women's status. 6. Trends in comparative analysis
pt. 3. Reconfiguration. 7. Theoretical reconfiguration. 8. Marind-anim. 9. Symbolic and sociopolitical permutations. 10. Regional characteristics and comparisons
Appendix: evidence concerning Asmat homosexuality