Melanesian Odysseys: Negotiating the Self, Narrative, and Modernity

In a series of epic self-narratives ranging from traditional cultural embodiments to picaresque adventures, Christian epiphanies and a host of interactive strategies and techniques for living, Kewa Highlanders (PNG) attempt to shape and control their selves and their relentlessly changing world. This lively account transcends ethnographic particularity and offers a wide-reaching perspective on the nature of being human. Inverting the analytic logic of her previous work, which sought to uncover what social structures concealed, Josephides focuses instead on the cultural understandings that people make explicit in their actions and speech. Using approaches from philosophy and anthropology, she examines elicitation (how people create their selves and their worlds in the act of making explicit) and mimesis (how anthropologists produce ethnographies), to arrive at an unexpected conclusion: that knowledge of self and other alike derives from self-externalization rather than self-introspection.

Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations Dramatis Personae Preface Overtures, Ethnographic and Theoretical Chapter 1. The Aesthetics of Fieldwork among the Kewa The Style and Tone of Kewa Life Bickering, Bantering and Coming to Blows Place, Movement and Residential Mobility Daily Life Scrambling into the Field: Mining the Field and Eliciting Minefields Chapter 2. Self Strategies: Ascription, Interlocution, Elicitation The Person/Self/Individual An Archaeology of the Self Ascription: Distinguishing, Co-creating and Merging Self and Other A Modern History of the Self: Interlocution and Its Denial The Everyday Self: Language and Communication at Issue What Speech Does: Communication as Capability Strategies Elicitation, Explicitness, Rehearsed and Rehearsing Talk and Action Conclusion PART I: NARRATIVES Chapter 3. Narrating the Self I: Moral Constructions of the Self as Paradigmatic Accounts Theories of Narrative Narrative and Paradigmatic Thought Ethics, Morality and the Self in Paradigmatic Accounts The Storytellers (Wapa, Ragunanu, Pupula, Yakiranu, Payanu) Kewa Pre-contact Practices and Persons: A Narrative of Many Growing up Of Courtship and Marriage Of Magic and Gardens Spirit Houses Pig Kills Warfare and Pacification Conclusions: Moral Constructions of the Self as Paradigmatic Accounts Chapter 4. Narrating the Self II: Metanarratives of Culture, Self, and Change The Storytellers (Rumbame, Alirapu, Mayanu, Mapi) Rumbame’s Story Alirapu’s Story Mayanu’s Story (Excerpt) Mapi’s Story Mapi: Visionary and Dreamer Four Features Revisited and Expanded Creating Moral Personhood Constructing Coherent Selves Constructing Critical Metanarratives Facing Modernity and Christianity Conclusion Chapter 5. Narrating the Self III: The Heroic, the Epic and the Picaresque in a Changed World The Storytellers (Hapkas, Papola, Rimbu, Lari) The Stories: Third Set Hapkas’s (Nasupeli’s) Story Papola’s Story Rimbu’s Story Lari’s Story Seizing the New World: Narrative, Consciousness and Communication The Heroic, the Epic, the Picaresque and the Symbolic Narrative as Form of Consciousness and Organization of Experience Experience and Consciousness Morality Narratives as Communication PART II: PORTRAITS (Several Weddings, Some Divorces and Three Funerals) Chapter 6. Portraits and Minimal Narratives: Elicitations of Social Reality Portraits, Stories and Minimal Narratives Elicitation and Explicitness Language, Talk and Action Norms and Claims: Rehearsed and Rehearsing Talk and Action Conclusion Chapter 7. Love and All That: Negotiating Marriage and Marital Life Courtship Problems with Bride Price Irregular Unions Polygyny and Conflict Ainu and Yako Giame and Yadi Lari and Rimbu Liame, Rosa and Kiru Rarapalu, Karupiri, Foti and Waliya Negotiating Marriage and Marital Life Love and All That Chapter 8. The Politics of Death Who’s the Big Man of Us All? Rake’s Death Duties to Persons, Rights in Persons: Wapa’s Death Out with the Old, in with the New: Payanu’s Death Death and Recurring Conflict: Conclusion Chapter 9. Mimesis, Ethnography and Knowledge Stories, Ethnography, Theory Mimesis as a Way of Knowing Ethnography as Difference, Locality and Chronicle Cultural Region and the Tyranny of Theoretical Regionalism Ethnography as Chronicle of Cultural History/History of Consciousness References Index

About the Author :
Lisette Josephides is Professor of Anthropology at Queen’s University Belfast, following many years of fieldwork in Papua New Guinea and teaching positions at the University of Papua New Guinea, the London School of Economics and the University of Minnesota.

Review :
“…a bold attempt to reshape ethnographic approaches to Melanesia.”  ·  JRAI "The effect is refreshing. The book is written with an immediacy of feeling for place and time and persons... It is a real pleasure to read, its theoretical impetus shot through with insights and aphorisms that can only have come from long reflected-upon ethnographic wisdom. This engaging book will be much debated, and deserves to be."  ·  Marilyn Strathern in The Australian Journal of Anthropology "...convincing and empathetic, rich in detail, and clearly based on a lifetime of fieldwork and friendship."  ·  Pacific Affairs