Social Reproduction and History in Melanesia
Mortuary Ritual, Gift Exchange, and Custom in the Tanga Islands

A study of mortuary rites in the Tanga Islands, Papua New Guinea.

Robert John Foster (Author)

9780521483322, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 27 April 1995

316 pages, 14 b/w illus. 3 maps 13 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.43 kg

"In short, this book will become a classic, in at least two senses: its innovations are firmly grounded in disciplinary and areal traditions, and it should provide a template for others attempting to situate ritual structures in historical contexts." Richard Parmentier, Ethnohistory

In much of Melanesia, the process of social reproduction unfolds as a lengthy sequence of mortuary rites - feast making and gift giving through which the living publicly define their social relations with each other while at the same time commemorating the deceased. In this study Robert J. Foster constructs an ethnographic account of mortuary rites in the Tanga Islands, Papua New Guinea, placing these large-scale feasts and ceremonial exchanges in their historical context and demonstrating how the effects of participation in an expanding cash economy have allowed Tangans to conceive of the rites as 'customary' in opposition to the new and foreign practices of 'business'. His examination synthesizes two divergent trends in Melanesian anthropology by emphasizing both the radical differences between Melanesian and Western forms of sociality and the conjunction of Melanesian and Western societies brought about by colonialism and capitalism.

1. Introduction: history, alterity, and a new (Melanesian) anthropology
2. Commoditization and the emergence of kastam
3. Kastam, bisnis and matriliny
4. Finishing the dead: an outline of Tangan mortuary feasts and exchanges
5. Replacing the dead: identical exchange and lineage succession
6. Performing lineage succession: feast giving and value-creation
7. Performing lineage succession: transformative exchange and the power of mortuary rites
8. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC]