Search

The driving theme of this article is the loss of poetics in the language of the Vula'a people of southeastern Papua New Guinea, in particular the relationship between language loss and knowledge loss--the type of knowledge that connects people to ancestors and is central to a group's identity. Drawing on examples from my fieldwork, I argue for the value of an ethnography of poetic language and for rethinking approaches to the study of Indigenous languages beyond instances when endangerment is imminent. My approach is influenced by Martin Heidegger and sits comfortably with recent theoretical perspectives that draw on the work of Edward S Casey (1996) and Tim Ingold (2000). Poetic language is not only prevalent in immediately recognizable genres; it also plays a significant role in many other oral traditions as well as in day-to-day life. Consequently, there is a pressing need to pay attention to disappearing poetic forms if we are to comprehend past and present lifeworlds. To this end, we should not be distracted by models that would reduce language to types of expression or to component parts. After presenting examples from my own research, I explore the work of other Melanesian ethnographers to reveal the relationship between poetic language, place, and Indigenous ways of knowing. KEYWORDS: Melanesia, oral tradition, poetics, ethnography, phenomenology, knowledge, By its novelty, a poetic image sets in motion the entire linguistic mechanism. The poetic image places us at the origin of the speaking being. --Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of [...]

ABSTRACT For the Villa 'a people of south-eastern Papua New Guinea names are a way of knowing that is intimately linked to a particular mode of being. The ethnography of [...]

While the Christian doctrine to which Hula villagers of the south east coast of Papua New Guinea today subscribe claims that community is achieved contractually through membership in the Church, this paper suggests that, in practice, Hula sociality is shaped by other exigencies. As part of their program the members of the Iru-ale United Church Women's Fellowship undertake the incorporation of certain outsiders (in this case the ethnographer) through the ceremonial presentation of food and the act of feeding. A phenomenology of this imperative reveals important connections to pre-Christian mythology and cosmology. Incorporation seen in this context situates the 'feeding relationship' at the core of a Hula ontology in which body and food are consubstantial. The manipulation of food as body is shown to play a determining role in the constitution of various modes of existence; human and non-human, male and female, the living and the non-living. The feeding relationship thus facilitates continuity between past and present practices and suggests that the Hula have assimilated the introduced religion into their lifeworld largely on their own terms., INTRODUCTION This paper began as an attempt to understand a ceremony enacted by a group of women during my PhD fieldwork (undertaken in 2001) in a village near Hula on [...]

Christianity dominates village sociality in the Hula villages of Papua New Guinea's southeastern coast to the extent that the United Church has appropriated and indigenized the Western custom of setting aside a day to celebrate motherhood. In the process Mother's Day has been transformed into an expression of local Christian values to which women should aspire. In many ways the events that take place invert gender roles, but we also find that certain things are always left to women. The events related here, through the perspective of the United Church Women's Fellowship (UCWF), also comment briefly on Adventism in Irupara and invite reflection on the particularities of local history.

The Motu and the Hula, two south coast Papua New Guinea societies, are linguistically related, have similar social organisation and were economically linked before European colonisation. They were both introduced to Christianity by the London Missionary Society in the late 19th century, and each appeared to incorporate the new religion into their social life and thought quickly and unproblematically. More than a century later, however, generalities about the similar adoption of Christianity by the Motu and the Hula are no longer possible. Nor are generalities about the engagement with Christianity within one or the other group, as individual Motu and Hula villages have unique histories. In this regard, while Christianity has now arguably become part of putative tradition among the Motu, some Hula are experiencing conflict between Christianity and their sense of tradition. In particular, while in the Motu village of Pari Christian virtues are appealed to as part of Pari's conception of itself as a 'traditional' Motu village, the situation in the Hula village of Irupara is more or less the contrary. Many people in Irupara are now lamenting 'tradition' as something lost, a forgotten essence destroyed or replaced by Christianity. Based on fieldwork in both villages, this paper discusses some differences in their engagement with Christianity and compares contemporary perceptions of religion, tradition and identity in both societies, informing a commentary on notions of tradition and anthropological representations of the Melanesian experience of Christianity., Introduction When Papua New Guinea achieved independence in 1975 its leaders declared Christianity to be the national religion. Indeed, census data indicated that by 1980 almost all adults professed to [...]

The Anthropology of Morality in Melanesia and Beyond J. Barker (ed.). Hampshire, England: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2007. 258 pp. bibliog., index. Price 55.00 £ (Hc.); ISBN 978-0-7546-7185-5. This volume brings [...]

Bruce M. Knauft. Exchanging the Past: A Rainforest World of Before and After. Chicago, Il. and London: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Pp. 303, 24 colour photos, bibliog., index. US$55 [...]

The Shark Warrior of Alewai: A Phenomenology of Melanesian Identity By Deborah Van Heekeren Wantage, UK: Sean Kingston Publishing. 2012 Pp: ix + 211 Price: US$110.00 This book presents a [...]

'We need a word that includes memory but embraces all the other ways of knowing a past,' wrote Greg Dening, in advocating the notion of a 'poetic for histories': culturally specific forms of knowledge of the past that embrace 'reminiscence, gossip, anecdote, rumour, parable, report, tradition, myth ... saga, legend, epic, ballad, folklore, annal, chronicle' (1991, 348-349). To this list we might want to add a range of other performative and sensory modes of engaging--consciously or unconsciously--with the past, including dancing, gardening, carving, smell, sound, and touch. Drawing on a large but diffuse body of global literature, and illustrating my argument with material from local historians, I consider how we might set about describing these historicities, or cultural logics of temporal process, in an Oceanic setting: how are they expressed, how might we come to understand them, and how are they transformed over time and through encounter with other historicities? Keywords: historicities, Oceania, Pacific, history, historical consciousness, Sunlight filtered through a veil of rain, the texture of an axe handle worn smooth with use, feathers nodding above a dancer's head, the true taste of water from one's [...]