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Displaying results 111 to 120 of 156.
Man Bac »
The Excavation of a Neolithic Site in Northern Vietnam
Edited by: Marc F. Oxenham, Hirofumi Matsumura, Nguyen Kim Dung
Publication date: May 2011
The site of Man Bac in the Red River Delta of Vietnam, one of the most meticulously excavated and carefully analysed of Southeast Asian archaeological sites in the past few years, is emerging as a key site in the region. This book carefully analyses the human and animal remains and puts them into context. The authors describe in detail the health status, the unusual demographic profile and the interestingly divergent affinities of the cemetery population, and discuss their meaning, particularly in association with evidence for the use of marine and terrestrial animal resources; they argue convincingly that the site documents a time when the face of the region’s population was undergoing a fundamental shift, associated with a changing economic subsistence base. Physical anthropologists and archaeologists have argued for years over the timeline, the manner and the very nature of Southeast Asian population history, and this book is essential reading in this debate. Two supporting appendices describe the individual remains in detail.
Ethnography & the Production of Anthropological Knowledge »
Essays in honour of Nicolas Peterson
Edited by: Yasmine Musharbash, Marcus Barber
Publication date: February 2011
Professor Nicolas Peterson is a central figure in the anthropology of Aboriginal Australia. This volume honours his anthropological body of work, his commitment to ethnographic fieldwork as a source of knowledge, his exemplary mentorship of generations of younger scholars and his generosity in facilitating the progress of others. The diverse collection produced by former students, current colleagues and long-term peers provides reflections on his legacy as well as fresh anthropological insights from Australia and the wider Asia-Pacific region. Inspired by Nicolas Peterson’s work in Aboriginal Australia and his broad ranging contributions to anthropology over several decades, the contributors to this volume celebrate the variety of his ethnographic interests. Individual chapters address, revisit, expand on, and ethnographically re-examine his work about ritual, material culture, the moral domestic economy, land and ecology. The volume also pays homage to Nicolas Peterson’s ability to provide focused research with long-term impact, exemplified by a series of papers engaging with his work on demand sharing and the applied policy domain.
In Good Faith? »
Governing Indigenous Australia through God, Charity and Empire, 1825-1855
Authored by: Jessie Mitchell
Publication date: January 2011
In the early decades of the 19th century, Indigenous Australians suffered devastating losses at the hands of British colonists, who largely ignored their sovereignty and even their humanity. At the same time, however, a new wave of Christian humanitarians were arriving in the colonies, troubled by Aboriginal suffering and arguing that colonists had obligations towards the people they had dispossessed. These white philanthropists raised questions which have shaped Australian society ever since.
Did Indigenous Australians have rights to land, rationing, education and cultural survival? If so, how should these be guaranteed, and what would people have to give up in return? Would charity and paternalism lead to effective government or dismal failure – to a powerful defence of an oppressed people, or to new forms of oppression?
In Good Faith? paints a vivid picture of life on Australia’s first missions and protectorate stations, examining the tensions between charity and rights, empathy and imperialism, as well as the intimacy, dependence, resentment and obligations that developed between missionary philanthropists and the people they tried to protect and control. In this work, Mitchell brings to life hitherto neglected moments in Australia’s history, and traces the origins of dilemmas still present today.
For more information on Aboriginal History Inc. please visit aboriginalhistory.org.au.
Steep Slopes »
Music and change in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea
Authored by: Kirsty Gillespie
Publication date: December 2010
The Duna live in a physical environment of steep slopes that are sometimes difficult to traverse. A stick of bamboo used as a prop goes a long way in assisting a struggling traveller. Similarly, the Duna live in a social and cultural environment of steep slopes, where the path on which they walk can be precarious and unpredictable. Songs, like the stick of bamboo, assist the Duna in picking their way over this terrain by providing a forum for them to process change as it is experienced, in relation to what is already known.
This book is a musical ethnography of the Duna people of Papua New Guinea. A people who have experienced extraordinary social change in recent history, their musical traditions have also radically changed during this time. New forms of music have been introduced, while ancestral traditions have been altered or even abandoned. This study shows how, through musical creativity, Duna people maintain a connection with their past, and their identity, whilst simultaneously embracing the challenges of the present.
A Kind of Mending »
Restorative Justice in the Pacific Islands
Edited by: Sinclair Dinnen, Anita Jowitt, Tess Newton
Publication date: November 2010
With their rich traditions of conflict resolution and peacemaking, the Pacific Islands provide a fertile environment for developing new approaches to crime and conflict. Interactions between formal justice systems and informal methods of dispute resolution contain useful insights for policy makers and others interested in socially attuned resolutions to the problems of order that are found increasingly in the Pacific Islands as elsewhere. Contributors to this volume include Pacific Islanders from Vanuatu, Fiji, the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea including Bougainville, as well as outsiders with a longstanding interest in the region. They come from a variety of backgrounds and include criminal justice practitioners, scholars, traditional leaders and community activists. The chapters deal with conflict in a variety of contexts, from interpersonal disputes within communities to large-scale conflicts between communities. This is a book not only of stories but also of practical models that combine different traditions in creative ways and that offer the prospect of building more sustainable resolutions to crime and conflict.
Altered Ecologies »
Fire, climate and human influence on terrestrial landscapes
Edited by: S. Haberle, J. Stevenson, M. Prebble
Publication date: November 2010
Like a star chart this volume orientates the reader to the key issues and debates in Pacific and Australasian biogeography, palaeoecology and human ecology. A feature of this collection is the diversity of approaches ranging from interpretation of the biogeographic significance of plant and animal distributional patterns, pollen analysis from peats and lake sediments to discern Quaternary climate change, explanation of the patterns of faunal extinction events, the interplay of fire on landscape evolution, and models of the environmental consequences of human settlement patterns. The diversity of approaches, geographic scope and academic rigor are a fitting tribute to the enormous contributions of Geoff Hope. As made apparent in this volume, Hope pioneered multidisciplinary understanding of the history and impacts of human cultures in the Australia- Pacific region, arguably the globe’s premier model systems for understanding the consequences of human colonization on ecological systems. The distinguished scholars who have contributed to this volume also demonstrate Hope’s enduring contribution as an inspirational research leader, collaborator and mentor. Terra Australis leave no doubt that history matters, not only for land management, but more importantly, in alerting settler and indigenous societies alike to their past ecological impacts and future environmental trajectories.
The Lihir Destiny »
Cultural Responses to Mining in Melanesia
Authored by: Nicholas A. Bainton
Publication date: October 2010
The people of the Lihir Islands in Papua New Guinea have long held visions of a prosperous new future, often referred to by local leaders as the ‘Lihir Destiny’. When large-scale gold mining activities commenced on the main island of Lihir in 1995, many hoped that this new world had finally arrived. The Lihir Destiny provides a nuanced account of the social structural and cultural transformations engendered by large-scale resource extraction. Tracing the history of Lihirian engagement with outside forces, from the colonial period through to recent mining activities, this book brings new light to bear on the bigger question of what ‘development’ means in contemporary Melanesia. The Lihir Destiny explores how Lihirian leaders devised future plans for a cultural revolution based upon the maximisation of mining activities and the influential philosophies of the Personal Viability movement. However, reaching the ‘Lihir Destiny’ is no simple affair, and many Lihirians find themselves negotiating divergent formulations of culture, sociality and economic engagement. The Lihir Destiny will appeal to readers interested in the social impacts of large-scale resource development, the processes of cultural continuity and change and the ways in which modernity is configured in local terms.
Rituals of Islamic Spirituality »
A Study of Majlis Dhikr Groups in East Java
Authored by: Arif Zamhari
Publication date: July 2010
This study examines the emergence of new forms of Islamic spirituality in Indonesia identified as Majlis Dhikr. These Majlis Dhikr groups have proliferated on Java in the last two decades, both in urban and rural areas, and have attracted followers from a wide social background. The diverse aspects of these Majlis Dhikr groups – their rituals, teachings and strategies of dissemination as well as the popular understanding of these rituals and their contestation by critics and opponents – are examined in detail and illustrated by reference to three particular groups – Salawat Wahidiyat, Istighathat Ihsaniyyat and Dhikr al-Ghafilin each of which has its own distinctive features and notable religious leadership. These Majlis Dhikr groups regard their activities as legitimate ritual practices that are in accordance with the legacy of Islamic Sufism based on the interpretation of the Qur’anic and Prophetic tradition.
Pioneers, Settlers, Aliens, Exiles »
The decolonisation of white identity in Zimbabwe
Authored by: J. L. Fisher
Publication date: March 2010
What did the future hold for Rhodesia’s white population at the end of a bloody armed conflict fought against settler colonialism? Would there be a place for them in newly independent Zimbabwe? Pioneers, Settlers, Aliens, Exiles sets out the terms offered by Robert Mugabe in 1980 to whites who opted to stay in the country they thought of as their home. The book traces over the next two decades their changing relationship with the country when the post-colonial government revised its symbolic and geographical landscape and reworked codes of membership. Particular attention is paid to colonial memories and white interpellation in the official account of the nation’s rebirth and indigene discourses, in view of which their attachment to the place shifted and weakened. As the book describes the whites’ trajectory from privileged citizens to persons of disputed membership and contested belonging, it provides valuable background information with regard to the land and governance crises that engulfed Zimbabwe at the start of the twenty-first century.
Gunnar Landtman in Papua »
1910 to 1912
Authored by: David Lawrence, Pirjo Varjola
Publication date: January 2010
Despite poverty and neglect the coastal Kiwai of the northern Torres Strait and Fly estuary are a strong and vibrant people with a long tradition of work in the marine industries of the Torres Strait. Regrettably their current social, economic and political problems are marginal to both Papua New Guinea and Australia. Gunnar Landtman’s research, undertaken between 1910 and 1912, is still a foundation stone for understanding the position of the Kiwai today. In those two years in Papua, Landtman managed to record a large collection of valuable legends and stories, many of which are still told today. He travelled widely throughout the Torres Strait, the southwest coast of Papua and the Fly estuary and even to the Gulf District. He made a comprehensive collection of Kiwai material culture now housed in the Museum of Cultures in Helsinki and a second, duplicate set for the Cambridge Museum. He also collected some of the earliest examples of Gogodala material culture available for research. In 1913, he published, Nya Guinea färden [New Guinea expedition], a detailed travelogue of his work and life among the Kiwai and, while he wrote a substantial corpus of work on the Kiwai in English, Swedish and Finnish over the next twenty years, this personal account in Swedish has not been translated into English before. It forms a crucial link between Landtman’s serious academic works and his intimate personal journey of discovery. The aim of this book is to bring the personal face of the serious anthropologist to greater attention.
David Lawrence began studying the Gunnar Landtman collections held by the National Museum of Finland when he was researching customary exchange across the Torres Strait for his doctorate at James Cook University. He was also fortunate to be able to spend two years of fieldwork in the Fly estuary region and visited nearly all the communities described by Landtman. He is a Visiting Fellow at the Resource Management in Asia/Pacific program of The Australian National University and has published works on Kakadu National Park and the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.