Melanesian odysseys : negotiating the self, narrative and modernity / Lisette Josephides.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Josephides, Lisette.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Kewa (Papua New Guinean people)--Social life and customs.

Kewa (Papua New Guinean people).

Kewa (Papua New Guinean people)--Psychology.

Oral tradition--Papua New Guinea.

Oral tradition.

Identity (Psychology)--Papua New Guinea.

Identity (Psychology).

Papua New Guinea--Social life and customs.

Papua New Guinea.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (272 p.)

Place of Publication:

New York : Berghahn Books, 2008.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In a series of epic self-narratives ranging from traditional cultural embodiments to picaresque adventures, Christian epiphanies and a host of interactive strategies and techniques for living, Kewa Highlanders (PNG) attempt to shape and control their selves and their relentlessly changing world. This lively account transcends ethnographic particularity and offers a wide-reaching perspective on the nature of being human. Inverting the analytic logic of her previous work, which sought to uncover what social structures concealed, Josephides focuses instead on the cultural understandings that peop

Contents:

Title page-Melanesian Odysseys; Contents; List of Illustrations; Dramatis Personae; Preface; Overtures, Ethnographic and Theoretical; CH 1-The Aesthetics of Fieldwork among the Kewa; CH 2-Self strategies; Part I-Narratives; Chapter 3-Narrating the self I; Chapter 4-Narrating the self II; Chapter 5-Narrating the self III; Part II-Portraits (Several Weddings, Some Divorces and Three Funerals); CH 6-Portraits and minimal narratives; CH 7-Love and all that; CH 8-The politics of death; CH 9-Mimesis, Ethnography and Knowledge; References; Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [227]-232) and index.

ISBN:

1-80758-603-0

1-282-62694-9

9786612626944

0-85745-055-7

OCLC:

645101180