Materializing the Nation

Materializing the Nation PDF Author: Robert J. Foster
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253215499
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
"Foster shows us how seemingly banal activities like making a phone call, chewing betel nut, watching a Coke commercial may give important insights into the ways in which the nation is constructed, materialized or contested."—Orvar Löfgren, author of On Holiday: A History of Vacationing Why, in the current era of globalization, does nationality remain an important dimension of personal and collective identities? In Materializing the Nation, Robert J. Foster argues that the contested process of nation making in Papua New Guinea unfolds not only through organized politics but also through mundane engagements with commodities and mass media. He offers a thoughtful critique of recent approaches to nationalism and consumption and an ethnographic perspective on constructs of the nation found in official policy documents, letters to the editor, school textbooks, song lyrics, advertisements, and other materials. This volume will appeal to readers interested in the links among nationalism, consumption, and media, in Melanesia and elsewhere.

Materializing the Nation

Materializing the Nation PDF Author: Robert J. Foster
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253215499
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 222

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Foster shows us how seemingly banal activities like making a phone call, chewing betel nut, watching a Coke commercial may give important insights into the ways in which the nation is constructed, materialized or contested."—Orvar Löfgren, author of On Holiday: A History of Vacationing Why, in the current era of globalization, does nationality remain an important dimension of personal and collective identities? In Materializing the Nation, Robert J. Foster argues that the contested process of nation making in Papua New Guinea unfolds not only through organized politics but also through mundane engagements with commodities and mass media. He offers a thoughtful critique of recent approaches to nationalism and consumption and an ethnographic perspective on constructs of the nation found in official policy documents, letters to the editor, school textbooks, song lyrics, advertisements, and other materials. This volume will appeal to readers interested in the links among nationalism, consumption, and media, in Melanesia and elsewhere.

Yali's Question

Yali's Question PDF Author: Frederick Errington
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226217451
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
Yali's Question is the story of a remarkable physical and social creation—Ramu Sugar Limited (RSL), a sugar plantation created in a remote part of Papua New Guinea. As an embodiment of imported industrial production, RSL's smoke-belching, steam-shrieking factory and vast fields of carefully tended sugar cane contrast sharply with the surrounding grassland. RSL not only dominates the landscape, but also shapes those culturally diverse thousands who left their homes to work there. To understand the creation of such a startling place, Frederick Errington and Deborah Gewertz explore the perspectives of the diverse participants that had a hand in its creation. In examining these views, they also consider those of Yali, a local Papua New Guinean political leader. Significantly, Yali features not only in the story of RSL, but also in Jared Diamond's Pulitzer Prize winning world history Guns, Germs, and Steel—a history probed through its contrast with RSL's. The authors' disagreement with Diamond stems, not from the generality of his focus and the specificity of theirs, but from a difference in view about how history is made—and from an insistence that those with power be held accountable for affecting history.

Hunting the Gatherers

Hunting the Gatherers PDF Author: Michael O'Hanlon
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 0857456911
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Between the 1870s and the 1930s competing European powers carved out and consolidated colonies in Melanesia, the most culturally diverse region of the world. As part of this process, great assemblages of ethnographic artefacts were made by a range of collectors whose diversity is captured in this volume. The contributors to this tightly-integrated volume take these collectors, and the collecting institutions, as the departure point for accounts that look back at the artefact-producing societies and their interaction with the collectors, but also forward to the fate of the collections in metropolitan museums, as the artefacts have been variously exhibited, neglected, re-conceived as indigenous heritage, or repatriated. In doing this, the contributors raise issues of current interest in anthropology, Pacific history, art history, museology, and material culture.

A Practice of Anthropology

A Practice of Anthropology PDF Author: Alex Golub
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773598634
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
Marshall Sahlins (b. 1930) is an American anthropologist who played a major role in the development of anthropological theory in the second half of the twentieth century. Over a sixty-year career, he and his colleagues synthesized trends in evolutionary, Marxist, and ecological anthropology, moving them into mainstream thought. Sahlins is considered a critic of reductive theories of human nature, an exponent of culture as a key concept in anthropology, and a politically engaged intellectual opposed to militarism and imperialism. This collection brings together some of the world’s most distinguished anthropologists to explore and advance Sahlins’s legacy. All of the essays are based on original research, most dealing with cultural change - a major theme of Sahlins’s research, especially in the contexts of Fijian and Hawaiian societies. Like Sahlins’s practice of anthropology, these essays display a rigorous, humanistic study of cultural forms, refusing to accept comfort over accuracy, not shirking from the moral implications of their analyses. Contributors include the late Greg Dening, one of the most eminent historians of the Pacific, Martha Kaplan, Patrick Kirch, Webb Keane, Jonathan Friedman, and Joel Robbins, with a preface by the late Claude Levi-Strauss. A unique volume that will complement the many books and articles by Sahlins himself, A Practice of Anthropology is an exciting new addition to the history of anthropological study.

Women and Islamic Revival in a West African Town

Women and Islamic Revival in a West African Town PDF Author: Adeline Masquelier
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253003466
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
In the small town of Dogondoutchi, Niger, Malam Awal, a charismatic Sufi preacher, was recruited by local Muslim leaders to denounce the practices of reformist Muslims. Malam Awal's message has been viewed as a mixed blessing by Muslim women who have seen new definitions of Islam and Muslim practice impact their place and role in society. This study follows the career of Malam Awal and documents the engagement of women in the religious debates that are refashioning their everyday lives. Adeline Masquelier reveals how these women have had to define Islam on their own terms, especially as a practice that governs education, participation in prayer, domestic activities, wedding customs, and who wears the veil and how. Masquelier's richly detailed narrative presents new understandings of what it means to be a Muslim woman in Africa today.

Moving by the Spirit

Moving by the Spirit PDF Author: Naomi Haynes
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520294246
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
Prologue : a breakthrough for Mr. Zulu -- Introduction : Pentecostalism as promise, Pentecostalism as problem -- Boom and bust, revival and renewal -- Making moving happen -- Becoming Pentecostal on the Copperbelt -- Ritual and the (un)making of the Pentecostal relational world -- Prosperity, charisma, and the problem of gender -- On the potential and problems of Pentecostal exchange -- Mending mother's kitchen -- The circulation of Copperbelt saints -- Conclusion : worlds that flourish

Cargo, Cult, and Culture Critique

Cargo, Cult, and Culture Critique PDF Author: Holger Jebens
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824828141
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
This collection of original essays is based on fieldwork in Melanesia, Fiji, Australia, and Indonesia by scholars who are influential in the contemporary debate on cargo cults.

Values and Valuables

Values and Valuables PDF Author: Cynthia Werner
Publisher: Rowman Altamira
ISBN: 0759115907
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
A group of distinguished anthropologists and economists discuss the value attached to material objects by different cultures. The authors consider the sacred nature of objects that are exchanged between individuals, the value and power of markets, money, and credit, and the ways in which contemporary people bestow symbolic value on objects or individuals. With its emphasis on the interplay of cultural and economic values, this volume will be a great resource for economists and economic anthropologists.

Frontier Intimacies

Frontier Intimacies PDF Author: Paola Canova
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 1477321489
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
Set in a Mennonite colony of Paraguay's remote Chaco region, this book tracks the lives and contested practices of indigenous Ayoreo women who commodify their sexuality, exposing the fractured workings of frontier capitalism.

From Primitive to Postcolonial in Melanesia and Anthropology

From Primitive to Postcolonial in Melanesia and Anthropology PDF Author: Bruce M. Knauft
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 9780472066872
Category : Ethnology
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
A prominent scholar surveys the special place of Melanesia in our understanding of human cultural variation