Return to the High Valley: Coming Full Circle

The author describes the changes that have taken place in the village of Susuroka in Papua New Guinea since he studied it during the early 1950s

Revisiting the highlands of Papua New Guinea where he had done anthropological fieldwork some 30 years agothe basis of his earlier The High ValleyRead found that Westernization has brought mixed blessings to the Gahuku, the adventurous, warm Melanesian people with whom he lived. Antagonism and distance between the sexes have eased up. More relaxed sexual mores now prevail, and young women may meet men at the "disco" tavern or in the marketplace. The "six to six," a dance that lasts from 6 p.m. until the following morning, is a popular event. The manly nama cult, with its flute music and climactic rituals glorifying masculinity, has vanished. Women now receive education along with men, travel freely and openly oppose male social controls. Yet Read worries about what he considers misguided attempts to graft fundamentalist Christianity onto this culture, and he envisages a marginal, impoverished position for the Gahuku in the world economy. Part memoir, part field report, this is an affectionate portrait of a people in the turmoil of social change.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Read's The High Valley (1965) is an anthropological classic. In it he tells not only of a New Guinea Highlands people, but of his complex personal relations with them. In this sequel, he reports on his 1981-82 return to what is now the nation of Papua New Guinea, 31 years after his first stay. He manages to convey the same eloquent sense of place and people that made his first book so poignant. He tells of the changes three decades have wrought in New Guinea and in the lives of his friends. Once again he shows us, in a way few authors have been able to duplicate, the intenseand extraordinaryquality of the anthropologist's life "in the field." This will be equally valuable to professional and student. Glenn Petersen, Sociology & Anthropology Dept., Baruch Coll., CUNY
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.