Pigs for the Ancestors : Ritual in the Ecology of a New Guinea People

Rappaport, Roy A.

ISBN 10: 0300013787 / ISBN 13: 9780300013788

Published by Yale University Press, New Haven & London, 1975

About this Item

311 Pages Indexed. 1975 printing of the 1968 copyright. Center section of black and white photographs. Store stamp inside back cover. No other marks of stamps to this tight, straight book. The Tsembaga Maring are a group of slash-and-burn farmers occupying a small territory on the northern slopes of the Central Highlands of New Guinea. Taking them to be part of a complex ecological system which includes their human neighbors as well as the flora and fauna with which they share their territory, Rappaport argues that their elaborate ritual cycle, which ostensibly refers to spirits, in fact operates as homeostatic mechanism regulating the size of the pig population, acreage in cultivation, fallow periods, energy expenditure in subsistence activities, protein ingestion, man-land ratios, and the frequency of fighting. Rappaport's study of the Tsembaga should be read by all scholars interested in the ethnography of New Guinea or the functions of rituals. In addition, this book should be read by anyone interested in ecology, cultural and noncultural. Pigs for the Ancestors will become the yardstick for studies in human ecology for a long time to come. --- Journal of Asian Studies.

Seller Inventory # 11777

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Pigs for the Ancestors : Ritual in the Ecology of a New Guinea People
• Publisher: Yale University Press, New Haven & London
• Publication Date: 1975
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0300013787
• ISBN 13: 9780300013788
• Binding: Trade Paperback
• Illustrator: Simmons, Marvin H.
• Edition: 8th Printing
• Condition: Near Fine

About this title

Synopsis

This influential work is the most important and widely cited book ever published in ecological anthropology. It is a classic case study of human ecology in a tribal society, the role of culture (especially ritual) in local and regional resource management, negative feedback, and the application of systems theory to an anthropological population. It is considered a major work of theory, yet it is also empirically grounded in Rappaport's meticulous collection of quantitative and qualitative data on such "material" matters as diet and energy expenditure, as well as such mental-cognitive-ideational domains as myth and folk taxonomies. Rappaport's tour de force is a recognized classic because it contributes in so many ways to anthropological theory, ethnographic methodology, ecological anthropology, and the anthropology of religion. This enlarged edition offers a carefully reasoned, empirically focused reassessment of Rappaport's original study in the context of ongoing theoretical and methodological problems.