Creative Land
Place and Procreation on the Rai Coast of Papua New Guinea
1st Edition
Published on 1. August 2004
258 pages
978-1-78920-583-1 (ISBN)
Description
What is creative in kinship? How are people connected to places? James Leach answers these questions through formulating "creativity" as an integral part of kinship on the north coast of Papua New Guinea. The book contains a new critique of the genealogical model of kinship, suggesting that this model prevents us from grasping the way generative relations, including those to land and place, constitute persons on the Rai Coast. Analytic attention is focused upon the life cycle, marriage, exchange and artistic production as the activities in which substantial connection is generated. The argument, made in relation to detailed ethnography, yields a fresh perspective on the connections people trace to each other.
Reviews / Votes
"What is new in Leach's account is the emphasis Nekgini speakers put on land. His attention to this emphasis makes his ethnography in many ways a powerful development... the book as a whole is consistently stimulating and theoretically sophisticated throughout." ? Joel Robbins, Contemporary Pacific"The ethnography itself is full of interesting observations and novel information, and repays a close reading with a vivid sense of the distinctiveness of Reite social life...Creative Land is itself 'creative' and will attain its own 'place' in the historical 'landscape' of studies of kinship in New Guinea and elsewhere. ? Andrew Strathern, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
More details
Edition
1. Auflage
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
4 Tables, unspecified; 3 Maps; 7 Figures
ISBN-13
978-1-78920-583-1 (9781789205831)
DOI
10.3167/9781571815569
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
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08/2004
1st Edition
Berghahn Books, Incorporated
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Book
08/2003
1st Edition
Berghahn Books, Incorporated
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Person
James Leach is Research Fellow in Anthropology, King's College, Cambridge, and Affiliated Lecturer in the Dept. of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge.
Field research: Madang Province, Papua New Guinea 1994-5, 1999, 2000-2001, 2003. Published works on kinship and place, creativity, artistic production, ownership and cultural/intellectual property. (Creative Land. Place and Procreation on the Rai Coast of Papua New Guinea. 2003 Berghahn Books, Rationales of Ownership. Transactions and Claims to Ownership in Contemporary Papua New Guinea, (ed with Lawrence Kalinoe), 2004 Sean Kingston Publishing.) Field Research U.K.: 2002 to present, as 'Attached Observer' with artists placements in Industry and Science. Also directing research on constructions of gender among Open Source software programmers, and on artist's relation with the law in the UK. Awarded the Royal Anthropological Institute JB Donne Prize in the Anthropology of Art for 1999, and The Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2004.
Field research: Madang Province, Papua New Guinea 1994-5, 1999, 2000-2001, 2003. Published works on kinship and place, creativity, artistic production, ownership and cultural/intellectual property. (Creative Land. Place and Procreation on the Rai Coast of Papua New Guinea. 2003 Berghahn Books, Rationales of Ownership. Transactions and Claims to Ownership in Contemporary Papua New Guinea, (ed with Lawrence Kalinoe), 2004 Sean Kingston Publishing.) Field Research U.K.: 2002 to present, as 'Attached Observer' with artists placements in Industry and Science. Also directing research on constructions of gender among Open Source software programmers, and on artist's relation with the law in the UK. Awarded the Royal Anthropological Institute JB Donne Prize in the Anthropology of Art for 1999, and The Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2004.
Content
List of Maps, Figures, Tables, and Photographs
Notes on the Text
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction: The Rai Coast
Chapter 1. Process and Kinship
Kinship, Process, and Creativity
Cognation and Flexibility
An Alternative to the Genealogical Model
The Palem
Chapter 2. Residence History and Palem
Hamlets Past and Present
Hamlets as Social Groups
The Labours of Lawrence Complexity
Chapter 3. Marrying Sisters
Defining Relationships
Myths and Explanations
Chapter 4. Gardens, Land, and Growth
Origin Points
Gendered Productivity: The Tambaran Households and Gardens
Gardening, not 'Production'
Gardens, Land, and Substance
Male Continuity, Female Movement
Chapter 5. Birth, Emergence, and Exchange
The Transactions Between Affinal Kin Focused on Children
Mother's Brothers in the Anthropological Literature
Affinal Payments and Lineality in Reite
Visibility and Recognition
Chapter 6. Spirit, Flesh, and Bone
The Palem as a Body
Performing Places
People and Spirits as Land Made Mobile
Chapter 7. Places and Bodies, Landscape and Perception
The Concept of Landscape in Anthropology
Hearing and Vision as Sensory Modalities
Landscape in the Nekgini Lifeworld
Chapter 8. Creative Land
Land, Place, and Person
Simple Principles, Complex Process
Creativity
Glossary
References
Index
Notes on the Text
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction: The Rai Coast
Chapter 1. Process and Kinship
Kinship, Process, and Creativity
Cognation and Flexibility
An Alternative to the Genealogical Model
The Palem
Chapter 2. Residence History and Palem
Hamlets Past and Present
Hamlets as Social Groups
The Labours of Lawrence Complexity
Chapter 3. Marrying Sisters
Defining Relationships
Myths and Explanations
Chapter 4. Gardens, Land, and Growth
Origin Points
Gendered Productivity: The Tambaran Households and Gardens
Gardening, not 'Production'
Gardens, Land, and Substance
Male Continuity, Female Movement
Chapter 5. Birth, Emergence, and Exchange
The Transactions Between Affinal Kin Focused on Children
Mother's Brothers in the Anthropological Literature
Affinal Payments and Lineality in Reite
Visibility and Recognition
Chapter 6. Spirit, Flesh, and Bone
The Palem as a Body
Performing Places
People and Spirits as Land Made Mobile
Chapter 7. Places and Bodies, Landscape and Perception
The Concept of Landscape in Anthropology
Hearing and Vision as Sensory Modalities
Landscape in the Nekgini Lifeworld
Chapter 8. Creative Land
Land, Place, and Person
Simple Principles, Complex Process
Creativity
Glossary
References
Index
