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In the Sepik Basin of Papua New Guinea, ritual culture was dominated by the Tambaran --a male tutelary spirit that acted as a social and intellectual guardian or patron to those under its aegis as they made their way through life. To Melanesian scholarship, the cultural and psychological anthropologist, Donald F. Tuzin, was something of a Tambaran, a figure whose brilliant and fine-grained ethnographic project in the Arapesh village of Ilahita was immensely influential within and beyond New Guinea anthropology. Tuzin died in 2007, at the age of 61. In his memory, the editors of this collection commissioned a set of original and thought provoking essays from eminent and accomplished anthropol...
Donald Tuzin first studied the New Guinea village of Ilahita in 1972. When he returned many years later, he arrived in the aftermath of a startling event: the village’s men voluntarily destroyed their secret cult that had allowed them to dominate women for generations. The cult’s collapse indicated nothing less than the death of masculinity, and Tuzin examines the labyrinth of motives behind this improbable, self-devastating act. The villagers' mythic tradition provided a basis for this revenge of Woman upon the dominion of Man, and, remarkably, Tuzin himself became a principal figure in its narratives. The return of the magic-bearing "youngest brother" from America had been prophesied, ...
Social Complexity in the Making is a highly accessible ethnography which explains the history and evolution of Ilahita, an Arapesh-speaking village in the interior Sepik region of northeastern New Guinea. This village, unlike others in the region, expanded at an uncharacteristically fast rate more than a century ago and has maintained its large size (more than 1500) and importance until the present day. The fascinating story of how Ilahita became this size and how organizational innovations evolved there to absorb internal pressures for disintegration, bears on a question debated ever since Plato raised it: what does it take for people to live together in harmony? Anthropologist David Tuzin,...
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1980.
Social Complexity in the Making is a highly accessible ethnography which explains the history and evolution of Ilahita, an Arapesh-speaking village in the interior Sepik region of northeastern New Guinea. This village, unlike others in the region, expanded at an uncharacteristically fast rate more than a century ago and has maintained its large size (more than 1500) and importance until the present day. The fascinating story of how Ilahita became this size and how organizational innovations evolved there to absorb internal pressures for disintegration, bears on a question debated ever since Plato raised it: what does it take for people to live together in harmony? Anthropologist David Tuzin,...
This collection of essays on the sexual culture of the Sambia of Papua New Guinea examines: fetish and fantasy; ritual nose-bleeding; the role of homoerotic insemination; the role of the father and mother in the process of identity formation.
Amazonia and Melanesia are half a world in distance, yet their cultures bear similarities in the areas of sex and gender. This work looks at ways in which sex and gender are elaborated, obsessed over, and internalized.
A stimulating and innovative consideration of the concept, causes, and practice of peace in societies both ancient and modern, human and primate. We know a great deal about aggression, conflict, and war, but relatively little about peace, partially because it has been such a scarce phenomenon throughout history and in our own times. Peace is more than the absence of war. Peace requires special relationships, structures, and attitudes to promote and protect it. A Natural History of Peace provides the first broadly interdisciplinary examination of peace as viewed from the perspectives of social anthropology, primatology, archeology, psychology, political science, and economics. Among other not...
The first in-depth, comparative, and interdisciplinary study of indigenous Amazonian musical cultures, Burst of Breath showcases new research on the dynamic range of ritual power and social significance of various wind instrumentsãincluding flutes, trumpets, clarinets, and whistlesãplayed in sacred rituals and ceremonies in Lowland South America. The editors provide a detailed overview of the historical significance, scientific classification, shamanic and cosmological associations, and changing social meanings of ritual wind instruments within Amazonian cultures. These essays present a wide perspective that goes beyond better-documented areas such as the Upper Xingu and northwest Amazon. ...