Twisted Histories, Altered Contexts: Representing the Chambri in the World System

Deborah Gewertz and Frederick Errington have worked as anthropologists in Papua New Guinea for nearly two decades. In this, their second joint study of the Chambri, they consider the way those in a small-scale society, peripheral to the major centers of influence, struggle to sustain some degree of autonomy. They describe the Chambri caught up in world processes of social and cultural change, and attempt to create a "collective biography" that conveys the intelligibility and significance of...