Anthropology Matters – serie

Of Alien Kings and Perpetual Kin presents a detailed understanding and analysis of the ideology of kingship among the Aruwund (Lunda) of southern Democratic Republic of the Congo. In doing so the text is drawn into addressing a range of important regional themes: the debate on the concept of the 'culture hero' in central African traditions of state formation; the system of 'perpetual kinship'; issues of hierarchy; and the symbolic use of space in royal ritual. All these lead to an analysis that stresses the fluidity and ambiguity of symbolic thought. In this, this innovative work questions the heuristic and theoretical validity of the concept of 'opposition' as used in theoretical models applied to the study of symbolism in which terms are self-contained and mutually exclusive.

What happens to national HIV programmes when Science and Religion collide and when both ignore the setting of most infections: in or on the way to marriage? HIV and AIDS are serious social and public-health problems in Papua New Guinea. After long delays, community-, business- and faith-based organizations have launched an impressive multi-sectoral response. But health-service systems are overwhelmed by the need for HIV antibody testing and counselling, and for treatment with antiretrovirals. Foreign notions of epidemiology, such as 'sex worker', 'risk group' and 'rural/urban', have gained traction despite massive empirical evidence as to their inapplicability. Each of these has fuelled, rather than confronted, the gendered contradictions of marriage and sexuality in Papua New Guinea. Quantitative approaches have fetishized numbers at the expense of enabling changes in social-structure. Part One of Sin, Sex and Stigma draws upon ethnography, public discourse and archival data to critique public-health policy and epidemiological modelling. Christian-inflected sex-negativity and anti-condom rhetoric are shown to have stymied prevention initiatives. Part Two enlists experts in antiretroviral therapy, sex work activism and ethnography in dialogues focused on strengthening the national response to HIV and AIDS. 'A "hot glow of anger" compelled Lawrence Hammar to write this fiery account of the many factors preventing successful HIV and AIDS interventions in Papua New Guinea. Drawing on his extensive research experience on sexuality and sex work, on cultural and Christian ideologies, and on outrageous stories of denial, abuse, and stigma, Hammar paints a rich and devastating portrait of the history of AIDS in PNG. Read it and weep. Lawrence Hammar is an inspiring reminder for AIDS scholars and activists everywhere of the differences committed social scientists can make to the way things are done.', Leslie Butt, Dept. of Pacific and Asian Studies, University of Victoria

Focusing on issues of empathy and mutuality, and self and other, as experienced in the everyday challenges of doing participant-observation fieldwork, this volume makes a significant contribution to rethinking the experiential and conceptual construction of the field. The contributors adopt a critical and self reflexive approach that goes beyond issues of voice and representation raised by early postmodern anthropology, to grapple with issues concerning the nature of knowledge transmission that lie at the very heart of the ethnographic effort. They explore how multiple modes of attending, awareness and sense making can shape the ethnographic process. Of note are those unanticipated, less palpable forms of communication that are peripheral to or transcend more formalized and structured research methods and agendas. Among these are empathy, intuition, somatic modes of attention and/or embodied knowledge and identification, as well as, shared sensory experiences and aesthetics. By the elaboration of such concepts the volume as a whole offers a substantial elaboration of a phenomenological approach.

The first anthropological monograph published on the Vula'a people of south-eastern Papua New Guinea, The Shark Warrior of Alewai considers oral histories and Western historical documents that cover a period of more than 200 years in the light of an ethnography of contemporary Christianity. Van Heekeren's phenomenology of Vula'a storytelling reveals how the life of one man, the Shark Warrior, comes to contain the identity of a people. Drawing on the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, she goes on to establish the essential continuities that underpin the reproduction of Vula'a identity, and to demonstrate how these give a distinctive form to Vula'a responses to historical change. In an approach that brings together the fields of Anthropology, History and Philosophy, the book questions conventional anthropological categories of exchange, gender and kinship, as well as the problematic dichotomization of myth and history, to argue for an anthropology grounded in ontology.