Twisted Histories, Altered Contexts: Representing the Chambri in the World System - Hardcover

Gewertz, Deborah B.; Errington, Frederick K.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521400120 ISBN 13: 9780521400121

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1991

Synopsis

Deborah Gewertz and Frederick Errington have worked as anthropologists in Papua New Guinea for nearly two decades. In this, their second joint study of the Chambri, they consider the way those in a small-scale society, peripheral to the major centers of influence, struggle to sustain some degree of autonomy. They describe the Chambri caught up in world processes of social and cultural change, and attempt to create a "collective biography" that conveys the intelligibility and significance of the twentieth century experience of these Papua New Guineans whom they have come to know well. This biography consists of interlocking stories, twisted histories, commentaries and contexts about Chambri who are negotiating their objectives while entangled in systemic change and confronting Western representations of modernization and development.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

Gewertz and Errington ( Cultural Alternatives and a Feminist Anthropology ) have produced their second book-length treatment on the Chambri, a tribal society first studied by Margaret Mead in the 1930s. This volume focuses on changes wrought in Chambri culture by tourism, formal education, urbanization and Westernization. It also examines the relationship of the tribe to the government of Papua New Guinea since 1975. The Chambri realize that the context in which they live has changed but are unsure of exactly how or what to do about it. For some, tourism is the way to obtain resources necessary to maintain their traditional lifestyle, but as the authors point out, the culture itself is altered by that very exploitation. Struggling to avoid the perils inherent in ethnology, the authors take an unconventional approach in that they seek to aid the Chambri in their fight for survival and autonomy. Gewertz and Errington's overtly political anthropology thus has ends narrower than anthropology in general: they force readers to acknowledge that all science serves certain goals and to ask whose goals it does serve. Illustrated.

Copyright 1991 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review

"What [the authors] have done best is to offer us a wealth of poignant insights into the ironies of life in the Chambri world of intersecting worlds. The altered contexts of development have indeed given Chambri histories new, often unpredictable twists that make fascinating reading." Anthropologica

"...wonderful, lively, and readable accounts....this is a wonderful, sensitive, and rich ethnography....this book should be read by professional and student anthropologists alike." Nelson H.H. Graburn, Pacific Studies

"...an important and readable book...an original, thoughtful and above all lucid account of the Chambri people of Papua New Guinea and their struggles for identity and autonomy." Pacific Affairs

"This valuable book rises to the Chambri situation, conveying the profundity of the moral choices facing these people and the enlarged responsibilities of the ethnographer in doing justice to it all. I highly recommend it." American Anthropologist

"Twisted Histories, Alfred Contexts is readable and accessible, quite suitable for undergraduate courses on social change and the contemporary Pacific." Eric Kline Silverman, Reviews in Anthropology

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521400120
• ISBN 13: 9780521400121
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 278