History and Tradition in Melanesian Anthropology (Studies in Melanesian Anthropology, No 10)

566 Pages·1992·1.42 MB·English

by  James G. Carrier

History and Tradition in Melanesian
title: Anthropology Studies in Melanesian
Anthropology ; 10
author: Carrier, James G.
publisher: University of California Press
isbn10 | asin: 0520075234
print isbn13: 9780520075238
ebook isbn13: 9780585112213
language: English
Ethnology--Melanesia--Methodology,
subject Ethnology--Melanesia--Philosophy,
Melanesia--Social life and customs.
publication date: 1992
lcc: GN668.H57 1992eb
ddc: 306/.0995
Ethnology--Melanesia--Methodology,
subject: Ethnology--Melanesia--Philosophy,
Melanesia--Social life and customs.
Page i
History and Tradition in Melanesian
Anthropology
Page ii
STUDIES IN MELANESIAN ANTHROPOLOGY
General Editors
Donald F.Tuzin
Gilbert H. Herdt
Rena Lederman
1. Michael Young, Magicians of Manumanua: Living Myth in
Kalauna
2. Gilbert H. Herdt, ed., Ritualized Homosexuality in Melanesia
3. Bruce M. Knauft, Good Company and Violence: Sorcery and Social
Action in a Lowland New Guinea Society
4. Kenneth E. Read, Return to the High Valley: Coming Full Circle
5. James F. Weiner, The Heart of the Pearl Shell: The Mythological
Dimension of Foi Society
6. Marilyn Strathern, The Gender of the Gift: Problems with Women
and Problems with Society in Melanesia
7. James G. Carrier and Achsah H. Carrier, Wage, Trade, and
Exchange in Melanesia: A Manus Society in the Modern State
8. Christopher Healey, Maring Hunters and Traders: Production and
Exchange in the Papua New Guinea Highlands
9. A. L. Epstein, In the Midst of Life: Affect and Ideation in the World
of the Tolai
10. James G. Carrier, ed., History and Tradition in Melanesian
Anthropology

Page iii
History and Tradition in Melanesian
Anthropology
Edited by
James G. Carrier
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley Los Angeles Oxford
Page iv
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press
Oxford, England
Copyright © 1992 by The Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
History and tradition in Melanesian anthropology/edited by James G.
Carrier.
p. cm.(Studies in Melanesian anthropology; 10)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-520-07523-4 (cloth)
1. EthnologyMelanesiaMethodology. 2. EthnologyMelanesia
Philosophy. 3. MelanesiaSocial life and customs. I. Carrier,
James G. II. Series.
GN668.H57 1992
306'.0995dc20 91-38223
CIP
Printed in the United States of America
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements
of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984
Page v
Contents
Preface vii
Introduction 1
James G. Carrier
1. Banana Leaf Bundles and Skirts: A Pacific Penelope's 38
Web?
Margaret Jolly
2. Substantivization and Anthropological Discourse: The 64
Transformation of Practices into Institutions in
Neotraditional Pacific Societies
Nicholas Thomas
3. Doing Ethnographic History: The Case of Fighting in 86
New Caledonia
Bronwen Douglas
4. Approaches to Articulation 116
James G. Carrier
5. Christianity in Western Melanesian Ethnography 144
John Barker
6. Kwaisulia as Culture Hero 174
Roger Keesing
7. Gone Native in Isles of Illusion: In Search of Asterisk 193
in Epi
Michael W. Young
Epilogue 224
Roger Keesing and Margaret Jolly
Contributors 249
Index 253
Page vii
Preface
This collection developed out of a growing frustration with the way
anthropologists have thought and written about Melanesian societies.
In the Introduction I lay out that frustration in academic language and
with proper regard for academic form. But underneath what I say
there, motivating my arguments, has been a growing sense that what
many were writing about Melanesia did not resemble, describe, or
even really refer to what I saw in my own fieldwork, on Ponam
Island, in Manus Province, Papua New Guinea, together with a
growing sense that what I saw there may not have been all that
unusual.
What did I see? I saw a society that was firmly situated in the late
twentieth century, a set of people who were not at all the inward-
facing and isolated villagers who seem to populate the societies
presented in so much Melanesian ethnography. Certainly Ponams
were fit subjects for conventional ethnographic presentation. They had
elaborate kinship organization, extensive ceremonial exchange, clouds
of ancestral spirits, and all the rest. But to present them this way
would have been to stress the separation between me and them,
between Western society and village life, and to ignore the
institutions, practices, habits, beliefs, and constraints that contradicted
that separation, that made them not alien people in an alien place and
time but that made them something more prosaic: another set of
people living in the world.
This reaction to the partiality of conventional anthropological
description is not one that I could have predicted, for that partiality
did not really become apparent until I thought anthropologically about
Ponam Island, and hence until I had to try to reconcile what I