What is it like for a native people of the rainforest to confront features of a modern world? In 1980-82, the Gebusi of Papua New Guinea held elaborate ritual dances and spirit seances, practiced alternative sexual customs, and endured a very high rate of violence. By 1998, however, most Gebusi had been willingly transformed by Christian ...
Twenty years ago, the Gebusi of the low-land Papua New Guinea rainforest had one of the highest homicide rates in the world. Bruce M. Knauft found then that the killings stemmed from violent scape-goating of suspected sorcerers. But by the time he returned in 1998, homicide rates had plummeted, and Gebusi had largely disavowed vengeance against ...
The communities of south coast New Guinea were the subject of classic ethnographies, and fresh studies in recent decades have put these rich and complex cultures at the centre of anthropological debates. Flamboyant sexual practices, such as ritual homosexuality, have attracted particular interest. In the first general book on the region, Dr Knauft ...
Are there multiple ways of being "modern" in the world today? How do people in various parts of the world become modern in their own distinct ways? Does the current focus on modernity in the social sciences resurrect a series of dichotomies ("traditional" and "modern," "the West" and "the Rest," "developed" and "undeveloped") that social theorists ...
From the 1960s to the early 1990s, anthropology has struggled with the tense relation between modern and postmodern sensibilities. Today the field requires humanism to self-consciously mediate an appreciation of cultural diversity with a critique of representation and inequality. By so doing, important perspective is gained on theoretical ...
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