Mangrove Man by David Lipset

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Summary

A modern ethnography of the Murik, a relatively large and important community settled on the Sepik River estuary in Papua New Guinea, and the only book of a non-Western culture drawing on the conceptual framework of the Russian literary theorist, Mikhail Bakhtin.

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Mangrove Man by David Lipset

This book is the first modern ethnography of the Murik, a relatively large and important community settled on the Sepik River estuary in Papua New Guinea, and the only book of a non-Western culture drawing on the conceptual framework of the Russian literary theorist, Mikhail Bakhtin. Murik men, who exercise political power, conceptualize women as the source of nurture, generosity and love. This conceptualization creates for men a kind of existential problem, and their claim to sustain and reproduce society requires them to appropriate the nurturant qualities of women. So they must, in some sense, model certain aspects of themselves after women. A 'maternal schema' or 'poetics of the female body', therefore underlines the sociocultural patterns of these societies. This schema expresses itself in a range of societal domains: in kinship relations, life-cycle rituals, the men's cults, and in disputes and processes of conflict resolution. The issues discussed tie in with some of the major contemporary debates in the social sciences: the relationship between ideas of male and female power.
'Mangrove man is a powerful and compelling addition to the theoretical repertoire which has been brought to bear on Melanesian gender, ritual and politics' Canberra Anthropology
David Lipset is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, USA. He has done long-term fieldwork in Papua New Guinea. His previous books include Gregory Bateson: Legacy of a Scientist and Mangrove Man: Dialogics of Culture in the Sepik Estuary.
SKU Unavailable
ISBN 13 9780521564342
ISBN 10 0521564344
Title Mangrove Man
Author David Lipset
Series Cambridge Studies In Social And Cultural Anthropology
Condition Unavailable
Binding Type Hardback
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Year published 1997-11-13
Number of pages 358
Cover note Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.