Martin, Keir.

The Death of the Big Men and the Rise of the Big Shots : Custom and Conflict in East New Britain. - 1st ed. - 1 online resource (272 pages) - ASAO Studies in Pacific Anthropology Ser. ; v.3 . - ASAO Studies in Pacific Anthropology Ser. .

Intro -- Dedication -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgements -- General Maps -- Note on Language -- Introduction Land Politics and Postcolonial Sociality in the Wake of Environmental Disaster -- 1 An Orientation to the Shifting Patterns of Tolai Land Tenure -- 2 Land at Sikut Freedom from Kastom and Economic Development -- 3 Kulia An Ambiguous Transaction -- 4 What Makes a Landholder A Case Study of a Matupit Land Dispute -- 5 Kastom, Family and Clan Extending and Limiting Obligations -- 6 Kastom and Contested Reciprocity -- 7 Big Shots, Corned Beef and Big Heads -- 8 A Fish Trap for Kastom -- 9 Big Men, Big Shots and Bourgeois Individuals Conflicts over Moral Obligation and the Limits of Reciprocity -- 10 Your Own Buai You Must Buy The Big Shot as Contemporary MelanesianPossessive Individual -- Conclusions -- Glossary -- References -- Index.

In 1994, the Pacific island village of Matupit was partially destroyed by a volcanic eruption. This study focuses on the subsequent reconstruction and contests over the morality of exchanges that are generative of new forms of social stratification. Such new dynamics of stratification are central to contemporary processes of globalization in the Pacific, and more widely. Through detailed ethnography of the transactions that a displaced people entered into in seeking to rebuild their lives, this book analyses how people re-make sociality in an era of post-colonial neoliberalism without taking either the transformative power of globalization or the resilience of indigenous culture as its starting point. It also contributes to the understanding of the problems of post-disaster reconstruction and development projects.

9780857458735


Big man (Melanesia) -- Papua New Guinea -- New Britain Island.
Ethnology -- Papua New Guinea -- New Britain Island.
Natural disasters -- Papua New Guinea -- New Britain Island.
New Britain Island (Papua New Guinea) -- Social life and customs.
Reciprocity (Commerce) -- Papua New Guinea -- New Britain Island.
Social conflict -- Papua New Guinea -- New Britain Island.


Electronic books.

GN671.N5 M36 2012

306.09958/5

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