Synopses & Reviews
This innovative work explores the historical consciousness of a people caught between two life-worlds. The Duna of Papua New Guinea have developed their own views of historical change, expressed in a fusion of two elements: indigenous ideas of cosmological cycles, and introduced Christian notions of worlds end.
The book explores how the formation of historical consciousness is constituted differently for men and women. A central focus is the fluid social environment of the Duna, where new contests about gendered personhood and agency emerge in the context of changing power relationships and arenas of cooperation between the sexes. The author reveals the links between gender and history and uses a gendered analysis as a lens of historical perception for viewing a wide range of topics. In the process, gender becomes “an idiom of thinking” that permeates all social domains, including kinship, marriage, and residence.
The theme of consumption emerges forcefully throughout the book, engaging such crucial issues as gender and inequality, constructions of personhood, and the influence of historical change on social life. The sphere of consumption is also where cultural projections and social practice meet in the powerful domain of notions about female witchcraft, since female agency and consumption wishes form the basis for male fear of witches. The author explains how, in circumstances of historical indeterminacy, there has been a shift in the semantic platforms on which Duna witchcraft notions are grounded, a shift that has led to a process of symbolic reconfiguration.
The book contributes to emerging trends in anthropological research in three ways. Ethnographically, it presents a transformed picture of people whose lives were examined by earlier, male ethnographers in terms of Marxist or sociobiological models. Analytically, it uses new perspectives to provide a more interpretive and nuanced account of gender relations. Theoretically, it explores the potential value of the theme of historical consciousness for an anthropology concerned with questions of change and with peoples perceptions about their past and their future.
Synopsis
An analysis of gender and historical consciousness in a fluid social environment.
Synopsis
Professor Stürzenhofecker examines the links between gender and history, arguing that historical consciousness develops differently for men and women. Examining the Duna of Papua New Guinea, whose unstructured social environments promote changing power relationships and allow for much cooperation between the sexes, she demonstrates the effect of this freedom on the historical consciousness of the Duna. Then, using gender as a lens through which to view history, Stürzenhofecker shows how all social domains are affected by perceptions of gender. The book contributes to emerging trends in anthropology. Ethnographically, it presents a transformed picture of people whose lives were examined by earlier, male ethnographers. Analytically, it uses new perspectives to provide an account of gender relations. Theoretically, it explores the potential value of historical consciousness.
Synopsis
In this study Professor Stürzenhofecker reveals the links between gender and history, arguing that historical consciousness develops differently for men and women. Examining the Duna of Papua New Guinea, whose unstructured social environments promote changing power relationships and allow for much cooperation between the sexes, she demonstrates the effect of this freedom on the historical consciousness of the Duna. Then, using gender as a lens through which to view history, Stürzenhofecker shows how all social domains, including kinship, marriage and residence, are affected by perceptions of gender.
Synopsis
This book traces the formation of historical consciousness among the Duna people of Papua New Guinea and explores how this is constituted differently for men and women.
About the Author
Gabriele Stürzenhofecker is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.
Table of Contents
Introduction; 1. History and histories: historical consciousness among the Duna; 2. The ground as cosmological image; 3. Residence and identity; 4. Dimensions of marriage; 5. Production, consumption, and space: women and men in everyday life; 6. The enemy within: witchcraft, consumption, and agency; 7. Consumption, personhood, and history; Appendix; Notes; Bibliography; Index.