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How is cultural change perceived and performed by members of the Bena Bena language group, who live in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea? In her analysis, Knapp draws upon existing bodies of work on ‘culture change’, ‘exchange’ and ‘person’ in Melanesia but brings them together in a new way by conjoining traditional models with theoretical approaches of the new Melanesian ethnography and with collaborative, reflexive and reverse anthropology.
“…this is a well-researched and ethnographically rich book…Readers with an interest in culture change, Melanesian personhood, the anthropology of Christianity, as well as those interested in the recent upsurge in sorcery and witchcraft in Papua New Guinea will find it particularly fascinating.” • Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
“This book is a rich ethnography of Bena people in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea and their cultural focus on exchange relationships.” • Sabine C. Hess, Australia National University
Maps and Photographs
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations &and Note on Foreign Terms
Introduction: Culture Change and Exchange
Chapter 1. Bena Stories, Histories and Sociality
Chapter 2. Unexpected Actions and strategic Exchanges: Leadership, Warfare, and Economy
Chapter 3. In Exchange with the World: The Concept of Person in Bena
Chapter 4. Changing Exchanges: Head Payments and Life-Cycle Rituals
Chapter 5. Magical Practices and their Transformations in Modern Bena
Chapter 6. Sanguma: The ‘Essence-Suckers’
Chapter 7. In Exchange with God: Christianity in modern Bena
Chapter 8. Expect the Unexpected: Scientology in Napamogona
Conclusion
References
Index