ASAEO + NEWS = ASAO

This paper examines the growth of ASAO from a society primarily focused on Eastern Oceania and Austronesian-speaking peoples to an umbrella organization that, today, encompasses the entire range of Pacific cultures. A primary decision towards this end was to include the very large number of researchers who work with speakers of non-Austronesian languages on the mainland of New Guinea. ASAO began as ASAEO, the Association for Social Anthropology in Eastern Oceania. Its members employed a controlled comparison approach to explore social variation in Austronesian (mostly Polynesian) societies. Meanwhile, Melanesianists, especially those working on the mainland of New Guinea with Papuan-speaking peoples, were without a comparable professional organization. Starting around 1980, a regional newsletter called NEWS (The NorthEast Wantok System newsletter) was begun with the goal of helping Melanesianists located in the Northeast area of the USA to keep in touch. It quickly grew and morphed into a regular newsletter with much wider (actually worldwide) distribution. But as the participation of Melanesianists in ASAO grew, NEWS became redundant with the ASAO Newsletter and the ASAONET listserv, and NEWS was terminated in May 1995. In this paper, I use NEWS as a focal point to trace the increasing involvement of Melanesianist anthropologists in ASAO and the concomitant broadening of ASAO’s comparative ethnographic base

Chiefly Models in Papua New Guinea

There has been a resurgent interest in traditional "chiefs" in eastern Melanesia, both as symbols of identity and power, and as agents for the facilitation and legitimization of postcolonial reform. However Papua New Guinea seems to have made relatively little use of such models of authority. This paper argues that the distribution of Austronesian and non-Austronesian languages within Melanesia helps account for this difference. Austronesian languages appear to be characterized by what is called "a lexicon of hierarchy," in which concepts related to chiefly models of authority are not uncommon, whereas non-Austronesian languages generally lack such terms. Speakers of Austronesian languages predominate in Fiji, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, and Solomon Islands, whereas nonAustronesian languages predominate in Papua New Guinea. Chiefly models seem to arise periodically in Papua New Guinea in Austronesian contexts, but are rejected by non-Austronesian-speaking cultures when an attempt is made to apply the models more broadly. Results have important implications for the practical implementation of legal and political reform in contemporary Papua New Guinea

Seasonal Births in a Western Abelam Village, Papua New Guinea

Cultural factors are important in birth seasonality in a village where other influencing factors such as temperature and humidity are relatively constant. The Western Abelam people have a system of ritual beliefs, involving the growth of ceremonial yams, which encourages a six-month period of sexual abstinence. Since birth control methods were not practiced, seasonal patterns in conceptions and births were hypothesized and tested using demographic data from one village. The seasonal distribution of known birth months of surviving children differed significantly from random (p \u3c .02). As predicted by ethnographic evidence, results for children of yam growers were significant (p \u3c.005) while birth season of children of non yam growers did not deviate significantly from the expected. The relationship among seasonal birth patterns and cultural, climatological and nutritional variables are examined. Results suggest the primary importance of cultural factors in Western Abelam birth seasonality

Making "Dead birds" : Chronicle of a Film : [book review]

Non UBCUnreviewedOthe

Rural and Urban Omaha Indian Fertility

A 1972 survey of fertility among 98 Omaha Indian women of childbearing age living in rural and urban areas of Nebraska shows that the urban experience has not depressed either fertility levels or the desire for large numbers of children. Larger numbers of children were desired and produced by city women than by their reservation counterparts. For other socio-economic and cultural variables such as age, education, income, and preservation of cultural traditions, the populations were comparable. High fertility cannot be explained by religious background, ignorance of, or unwillingness to use birth control. Values placed upon large families are probably related to past and present experiences of high loss rates among those children conceived and born