145 research outputs found
An Overview of Rossel Island Exchange
FORUM: A DISCUSSION OF JOHN LIEPâS RECENT BOOK, A PAPUAN PLUTOCRACY: RANKED EXCHANGE ON ROSSEL ISLAND (2009)
In September 2009 a group of scholars met at Aarhus University, Copenhagen, for the defence of Mag. Scient. John Liepâs doctoral thesis, published by Aarhus University Press under the title, A Papuan Plutocracy: Ranked Exchange on Rossel Island (2009). The book is the first full-scale modern ethnography of the well-known shell money system on Rossel Islandâone of the most complex such systems on record. Liepâs ethnography is very powerful, but more than that, the book is built around an ambitious and unusual critique of notions of reciprocity and the gift economy that are of great general importance. Liepâs three examiners were Joel Robbins, Chris Gregory and Ton Otto. In light of the depth of debate that marked the occasion of the defence, there was a eneral feeling that the discussion deserved a wider forum. The result is the texts that are published together here
Helena Wayne (red.): The Story ofa Marriage. The Letters of Bronislaw Malinowski and Elsie Masson.
The Letters of Bronislaw Malinowski and Elsie Masson. 175
Anmeldes af John Liep
ET VILDNIS AF TABUER: Jagten pĂĽ en kulinarisk struktur
John Liep: A Wilderness of Taboos: The
Quest for a Culinary Structure
Recent anthropological research in
Melanesia has focused on the construction of
the person, theories of conception and
procreation, and flows of substances through
social relations and persons. There will often
be a correspondence between substances
such as sperm and biood, bodily parts such as
bone and flesh, and contrasting foods that are
gendered. An asymmetric constitution of the
person and a clear structuration of food
prestations between affinal sides may exist.
A study of these themes on Rossel Island,
Papua New Guinea yielded frustrating
results. No clear idea of contrasting, gendered
body aspects was found. Further, a large
number of food taboos for menstruating,
pregnant and lactating women was
distributed in clusters that were amenable to
various logics of interpretation without any
total structural logic appearing. This
negative result is explained by the absence of
any sustained practice of asymmetric
marriage and corresponding complementary
prestations between affines, which would
reproduce an ordering asymmetric structure
of the person and of the universe of foods
Anita Herle & Sandra Rouse (eds.): Cambridge and the Torres Strait. Centenary Essays on the 1898 Anthropological Expedition
Anmeldes af John Liep
 
Maurice Godelier: The Enigma of The Gift.
Anmeldes af John Liep
 
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