Remaking the World: Myth, Mining, and Ritual Change Among the Duna of Papua New Guinea

by Pamela J. Stewart, Andrew Strathern

Overview

Drawing on both their own fieldwork from 1991 to 1999 and older written sources, Stewart and Strathern explore how the Duna have remade their rituals and associated myths in response to the outside influences of government, Christianity, and large-scale economic development, specifically mining and oil prospecting. The authors provide in-depth ethnographic materials on the Duna and present many detailed descriptions of ritual practices that have been abandoned. Remaking the World is a timely contribution to the literature on agency and the making of cultural identity by indigenous peoples facing economic, social, and political change.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781588340122
Publisher:	Smithsonian Institution Press
Publication date:	03/17/2002
Series:	Smithsonian Ethnogrphc Inquiry Series
Pages:	219
Product dimensions:	6.31(w) x 9.32(h) x 0.92(d)

About the Author

Pamela J. Stewart is coauthor of Collaborations and Conflicts: A Leader Through Time (1999) and a research associate in the department of anthropology and the department of religious studies at the University of Pittsburgh.

Andrew Strathern is coauthor of Arrow Talk: Transaction, Transition, and Contradiction in New Guinea Highlands History (2000) and is Mellon Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 The Duna and Their Land Chapter 2 Making and Remaking the World Chapter 3 AUWI: Stones of Power Chapter 4 Cults, Local and Regional Chapter 5 The Female Spirit Chapter 6 Churches and Change Chapter 7 Mining and Malu Chapter 8 Drilling the Giant Landowner Chapter 9 Myth, Ritual, and History