| Acting for Others: Relational Transformations in Papua New Guinea Contributor(s): Bonnemère, Pascale (Author), Scott, Nora (Translator) |
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ISBN: 099736758X ISBN-13: 9780997367584 Publisher: Hau OUR PRICE: $34.65 Product Type: Paperback Published: May 2018 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Social Science | Anthropology - General - Social Science | Gender Studies |
| Dewey: 305.899 |
| Physical Information: 1" H x 6" W x 8.9" (1.15 lbs) 322 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - Oceania |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: For the Ankave of Papua New Guinea, men, unlike women, do not reach adulthood and become fathers simply by growing up and reproducing. What fathers--and by extension, men--actually are is a result of a series of relational transformations, operated in and by rituals in which men and women both perform complementary actions in separate spaces. Acting for Others is a tour de force in Melanesian ethnography, gender studies, and theories of ritual. Based on years of fieldwork conducted by the author and her husband and co-ethnographer, this book's "double view" of the Ankave ritual cycle--from women in the village and from the men in the forest--is novel, provocative, and one of the most incisive analyses of the emergence of ideas of gender in Papua New Guinea since Marilyn Strathern's The Gender of the Gift. At the heart of Pascale Bonnem re's argument is the idea that it is possible for genders to act for and upon one another, and to do so almost paradoxically, by limiting action through the obeying of taboos and other restrictions. With this first English translation by acclaimed French translator Nora Scott, accompanied by a foreword from Marilyn Strathern, Acting for Others brings the Ankave ritual world to new theoretical life, challenging how we think about mutual action, mutual being, and mutual life. |
Contributor Bio(s): Scott, Nora: - Nora Scott is a recipient of the French-American Foundation Translation Prize for Maurice Godelier's The Metamorphosis of Kinship.Bonnemere, Pascale: - Pascale Bonnemère is director of research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. |
