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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 article reviews the book "The Shark Warrior of Alewai: A Phenomenology of Melanesian Identity" by Deborah Van Heekeren.

This article describes an ethnographic project initiated by a group of people in Irupara village, Papua New Guinea (PNG), who for a period between 2001 and 2010 self-identified as ‘historians’. At the forefront of the group’s concerns was a younger generation unfamiliar with the local language names of fish and fishing techniques. I document the collaborative project developed to address a situation perceived as a loss of language, culture, and identity. As well as providing a valuable lexicon in an Austronesian language, the research brings to light important distinctions between recording ‘history’ and ways of recalling and expressing the past commonly referred to as ‘historicity’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the Vula'a villages of south-east Papua New Guinea, the experience of more than a century of Christianity has been incorporated into local understandings of identity and tradition. Church-building (in both the architectural and ideological sense) is at the centre of village life. Even though it was a general policy of the London Missionary Society to build a church in every village in which conversion was undertaken, they did not build a church in the Vula'a village of Alewai. In 2001 the fact that Alewai did not have a church initiated a chain of events that draws attention to a situation of current relevance for Papua New Guinea, as evangelists no longer work to convert the 'heathen' but to convert Christians from one denomination to another. As a case study the article is focused on the pastors and deacons of the United Church and thus also serves to document some of the changes that have occurred in male leadership since the early colonial era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Vula'a people of south-eastern Papua New Guinea have been Christians for more than a century. Through a phenomenology of the transformation of their song and dance styles, this paper sheds light on the nature of the engagement between globalising religions and localised practice. It draws attention to the importance of the appropriation of the Polynesian prophet songs (peroveta), initially as part of the process of conversion undertaken by the London Missionary Society, and presently as an expression of local Christian identity that is shaped by 'traditional' exigencies. Song connects the living community and extends the bounds of that community to the non-living, promoting an existential plenitude. I argue that the Christian song styles which replaced traditional dances reproduce a distinctly Melanesian ontology. Further, the instrumental position of early Polynesian mission teachers, both as agents for the new religion and their self-representation as geographically distant 'kin' of the Vula'a problematises any easy division between the local and the global. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores some of the issues evoked in recent attempts by the Vula'a people of south eastern Papua New Guinea to document their history. Drawing on ethnographic research and Heideggerian philosophy it investigates the complex of myth, history and Christianity manifest in their representations of the past. The Vula'a lifeworld accommodates what might commonly be perceived as contradictions - multiple versions of significant local stories, and an acceptance of Christianity without the forfeiture of pre-Christian cosmology. I suggest that if we are to understand this lifeworld we must move beyond simple distinctions between history and myth, truth and falsity. Western ideas about truth and rationality are thus questioned in light of Vula'a experience. I propose we see myth as a mode of being and, consequently, as a form of truth. This is not, though, the truth of Western science, of proof and explanation. In Heidegger's terms it is "essential" and therefore beyond the realm of provability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the relationship between Heidegger's phenomenological ontology and Maurice Leenhardt's ethnographic study of New Caledonia. For Leenhardt, the kamo, or authentic person, was a participatory personage existing in relationship with other humans, with nature and with mythic beings. He used the term mythe vécu (living myth) to argue for an under- standing of myth that was grounded in experience, rather than narrative, and to elaborate his understanding of a uniquely Melanesian mode of Being. I argue that, as well as echoing some of Heidegger's insights, Leenhardt's view of mythic consciousness has much in common with Sartre's analysis of emotional consciousness. The `experience' I refer to in this discussion is that of the Hula, on the south-east coast of Papua New Guinea. Drawing also on some other Melanesian ethnography, I suggest that an existentialist perspective not only extends the relevance of Leenhardt's interpretation of myth but also constitutes an important development in our understanding of Melanesian ontology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how the Amis, the largest indigenous community in Taiwan, draw on their Catholic faith to understand what it means to be Taiwanese. For over a century, the Amis were treated as marginalised citizens by the Japanese colonial government and the Han-Chinese Kuomintang under Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo. Their predicament changed when political priorities shifted from cultural assimilation to multiculturalism after 1987. Successive Taiwanese governments since then have actively sought to incorporate indigenous culture as a core part of Taiwanese identity. Focusing on how the Amis intertwined their adopted Catholic notions and practices with pre-Christian ideas, social structure, and rituals, this paper demonstrates the ways in which the Amis carve out a place for themselves in wider Taiwanese society. It adds to ongoing discussions about the relationship between conversion and cultural transformation in Oceania by arguing that Catholicism empowered the Amis to deepen their sense of belonging to the island republic and, for the first time, assert themselves fully as Taiwanese. Résumé: Cet article s' intéresse à la manière dont les Amis, la communauté autochtone la plus importante à Taiwan, s' appuient sur leur foi catholique pour formuler leur appartenance à la société taiwanaise. Pendant plus d' un siècle, les Amis ont été marginalisés par le gouvernement colonial japonais puis par le Kuomintang han-chinois sous Chiang Kai-shek et Chiang Ching-kuo. Leur situation a changé quand la priorité politique n' a plus été l' assimilation culturelle mais l' établissement d' un multiculturalisme, après 1987. Depuis lors, les gouvernements taiwanais successifs ont cherché activement à intégrer la culture autochtone comme une composante centrale de l' identité taiwanaise. En analysant la manière dont les Amis associent les croyances et les pratiques catholiques qu' ils ont adoptées avec les conceptions, les structures sociales et les rituels pré-chrétiens, l' article montre comment ils se font par là-même une place au sein de la société taiwanaise. Il contribue ainsi aux débats sur la relation entre conversion et changement culturel en Océanie, en défendant l' idée que le catholicisme donne aux Amis les moyens d' affirmer leur sentiment d' appartenance à la société taiwanaise et de se sentir, pour la première fois, pleinement taiwanais. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has become a convention in Melanesia that there is a vital relationship between group identity and land. Understandably then, as Papua New Guinea’s National Capital District has continually spread across the traditional territory of the Motu and Koita people, many people in the two groups fear their identity is threatened by their loss of land. Applying a historical perspective to their experience and contemporary apprehensions, this article critiques the discursive connection between land and identity, arguing that identity is connected not to ‘land’ but to places, and that toponymy is integral to the temporality of identity. In this regard, the contemporary orthography of urban Koita toponymy provides evidence of the resilience of identity – related to places – in the course of long-term socio-political change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the first Europeans to encounter and settle on the southeastern coast of New Guinea, members of the London Missionary Society contributed a large corpus of publications concerning indigenous peoples from the mid-1870s until the rise of professional anthropology in the 1920s. While these works focus mainly on the activities and concerns of men, women provide a key index of “civilization” relative to the working British middle class from which most missionaries came. This essay provides a survey of the portrayal of women in this literature over three partly overlapping periods, demonstrating a shift from racialist to moral discourses on the status of Papuan women - a shift that reflects transitions in both missionary and anthropological assumptions during this period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Lisu of south-west China were evangelised a hundred years ago by missionaries from the China Inland Mission and adopted Christianity in a people movement that permeated nearly their entire society. The missionaries recognised that the Lisu were a singing people, and translation of a hymnbook proceeded apace together with translation of the New Testament. Further, many Western hymns were translated using Lisu poetic forms. These translated Western hymns not only became the centrepiece for worship, but were also part of the daily rhythm of life for Lisu Christians. Though the missionaries departed more than seventy years ago, the hymns, still sung a capella in four-part harmony, have remained. While the bible remains somewhat out of reach for the vast majority of Lisu peasant farmers with low reading and writing skills, the hymnbook is well-known and well-worn, its contents easy to find and many of its most familiar hymns memorised. The various functions the hymns provide for Lisu Christians overlap and intersect at various levels of meaning and experience, which can be encapsulated into one central understanding: the Lisu hymns serve as a theological mediator for Lisu Christians, bridging the gap between the text-intensive religion that is Christianity and the oral world of Lisu culture. In the everyday arena, in the practical living out of what it means to be a Christian for a communal and still largely oral-preference people such as the Lisu, the Lisu Christian hymns are the centrepiece of worship and devotion, prayer and penitence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses bibliography that covers books, articles and chapters which appeared in 2003 and the early part of 2004. Most official publications are excluded. Books, articles, chapters and reprints are interfiled. An attempt has been made to supply complete and accurate bibliographical details based on personal examination, but this is not always possible if a work has been published outside Australia. Items are numbered and an author index has been provided. Many people have contributed to the bibliography. The author particularly wishes to thank Frédéric Angleviel, Chris Ballard, Niel Gunson, Hugh Laracy and Jennifer Terrell.

An index to volume 19 of "The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute" is presented.

'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 [...]