Tracing The Melanesian Person

This book explores what it means to be Lihirian through an analysis of everyday life in the Lihir Islands, Papua New Guinea. Atop four volcanic islands in the Pacific Ocean east of New Ireland, Lihirians are living in a world that has rapidly changed in the last century through the work of Christian missions, government administration and the development of a large gold mine (Lihir Gold Ltd). Being Lihirian in the context of these changes is challenging, yet Lihirians retain a strong sense of themselves and their islands as distinctive. This book aims to reconcile what has been termed the 'root metaphor' of Melanesian sociality as based on relational or composite personhood with the strong individualist tendencies and sense of self that are found in everyday practice in Lihir. In looking beyond the ideals of moral conduct to the practice of relations and emotion, it can be seen that the symbolism of Melanesian sociality does not encompass the practical reality of what it means to be Lihirian. Emotion is a ubiquitous part of life in Lihir. Emotions are motivations, reactions and remarks on the state of self and other; in short, emotions are integral to relations and persons in Lihir. This book considers emotions both through their performative contexts as well as the more usual lexical analyses of emotion terms and commentaries. In moving beyond lexical analyses, Hemer argues that the strong focus on the semantics of emotion in anthropology has been at the expense of the embodied practice of emotion that was apparent in Lihir. Through this engaging ethnographic account of connections, conflicts and loss in Lihir, Hemer's own fieldwork journey of making relationships, experiencing disputes and finally leaving the field, is mirrored. Structured into three parts, the book works through the complexities of creating and sustaining relationships, the evaluation of conduct as moral and the practices of conflict, and the experiences and transformations of death and grief. Throughout these parts various emotions are highlighted and interrogated for their relationship to psychological understandings and definitions: love, anger, jealousy, sadness. Emotions are also understood in a historical context and as connected to social changes wrought by interactions with global phenomena such as religion.

This volume draws together three core concerns for the social sciences: the senses and embodiment, emotions, and space and place. In so doing, these collected essays consider the ways in which these core concerns are mutually constitutive. This includes how spaces evoke, constrain or are composed by the senses and emotions; the ways in which emotions are generated or transformed in certain spaces and through sensual engagement; and the processes by which embodied senses create spaces and emotions.

The SARS-CoV-2 virus, commonly referred to as COVID-19, is perhaps the greatest threat to life, and lifestyles, around the world in more than a century. Although there is little global agreement on many issues related to the virus, there is widespread agreement that the actual number of cases – both of those infected and of those who have died as a result of infection – is certainly much higher than official numbers suggest. The impact of the virus, however, has spread well beyond the realm of the medical, also heavily impacting social, cultural, economic, political, and quotidian ways of living for nearly every human being on the planet. The two edited volumes in this set contribute to a broader understanding of the impact COVID-19 is having, and will have, on our understandings, efforts, and decisions of the future of global society.

Scholarly studies on the Igbo have been scant and fragmented. Politics and Identity Formation in Southeastern Nigeria: The Igbo in Perspective fills an obvious gap, exploring the social, cultural,economic, political, and aesthetic traditions that distinguish the Igbo of southeasternNigeria from their neighbors. In scope, content, and analysis this book is both multi- and cross-disciplinary, focusing on the experiences and forces that have shaped the Igbo society, identity formation, and sociocultural, political, and aesthetic representations. Themes such as the importance ofIgbo names in understanding the people’s social, linguistic, religious, gender, and cultural identities, as well as the intersection of language, politics, socialization, education, and aesthetic expression in the Igbo experience in Nigeria, are interrogated in a refreshing fashion with an appreciable level of originality.

The disciplines of philosophy and cultural anthropology have one thing in common: human behavior. Yet surprisingly, dialogue between the two fields has remained largely silent until now. Selfhood and Recognition combines philosophical and cultural anthropological accounts of the perception of individual action, exploring the processes through which a person recognizes the self and the other. Touching on humanity as porous, fractal, dividual, and relational, the author sheds new light on the nature of selfhood, recognition, relationality, and human life.

Ethnomusicology: A Contemporary Reader, Volume II provides an overview of developments in the study of ethnomusicology in the twenty-first century, offering an introduction to contemporary issues relevant to the field. Nineteen essays, written by an international array of scholars, highlight the relationship between current issues in the discipline and ethnomusicologists’ engagement with issues such as advocacy, poverty and social participation, maintaining intangible cultural heritages, and ecological concerns. It provides a forum for rethinking the discipline’s identity in terms of major themes and issues to which ethnomusicologists have turned their attention since Volume I published in 2005. The collection of essays is organized into six sections: Property and Rights Applied Practice Knowledge and Agency Community and Social Space Embodiment and Cognition Curating Sound Volume II serves as a basic introduction to the best writing in the field for students, professors, and music professionals, perfect for both introductory and upper level courses in world music. Together with the first volume, Ethnomusicology: A Contemporary Reader, Volume II provides a comprehensive survey of current research directions.

This collection of papers is the seventh volume in the Comparative Austronesian series. The papers in this volume focus on societies from Sumatra to Melanesia and examine the expression and patterning of Austronesian thought and emotions.

As we move further into the twenty-first century, we are witnessing both the global extensification and local intensification of inequality. Unequal Lives deals with the particular dilemmas of inequality in the Western Pacific. The authors focus on four dimensions of inequality: the familiar triad of gender, race and class, and the often-neglected dimension of generation. Grounded in meticulous long-term ethnographic enquiry and deep awareness of the historical contingency of these configurations of inequality, this volume illustrates the multidimensional, multiscale and epistemic nature of contemporary inequality. This collection is a major contribution to academic and political debates about the perverse effects of inequality, which now ranks among the greatest challenges of our time. The inspiration for this volume derives from the breadth and depth of Martha Macintyre’s remarkable scholarship. The contributors celebrate Macintyre’s groundbreaking work, which exemplifies the explanatory power, ethical force and pragmatism that ensures the relevance of anthropological research to the lives of others and to understanding the global condition. ‘Unequal Lives is an impressive collection by Melanesianist anthropologists with reputations for theoretical sophistication, ethnographic imagination and persuasive writing. It brilliantly illuminates all aspects of the multifaceted scholarship of Martha Macintyre, whose life and teaching are also highlighted in the commentaries, tributes and interview included in the volume.’ — Robert J. Foster, Professor of Anthropology and Visual and Cultural Studies, Richard L. Turner Professor of Humanities, University of Rochester ‘Inspired by Martha Macintyre’s work, the contributors to Unequal Lives show that to theorise inequality is a measured project, one that requires rescaling its exercise over several decades in order to recognise the reality of inequality as it is known in social relations and to document it critically, unravelling their own readiness to misjudge what they see from the lives that are lived by the people with whom they have lived and studied. This fine volume shows how the ordinariness of everyday work and care can be a chimera wherein the apparent reality of inequality might mislead less critical reports to obscure its very account. From reading it, we learn that such unrelenting questioning of what makes lives unequal becomes the very analytic for better understanding lives as they are lived.’ — Karen M. Sykes, Professor of Anthropology, University of Manchester