Andrew Strathern - Expressive Genres and Historical Change

Series Editors:
Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathern
University of Pittsburgh, USA

This series offers a fresh perspective on Asian and Indo-Pacific Anthropology. Acknowledging the increasing impact of transnational flows of ideas and practices across borders, the series widens the established geographical remit of Asian studies to consider the entire Indo-Pacific region. In addition to focussed ethnographic studies, the series incorporates thematic work on issues of cross-regional impact, including globalization, the spread of terrorism, and alternative medical practices.

The series further aims to be innovative in its disciplinary breadth, linking anthropological theory with studies in cultural history and religious studies, thus reflecting the current creative interactions between anthropology and historical scholarship that are enriching the study of Asia and the Indo-Pacific region. While the series covers classic themes within the anthropology of the region such as ritual, political and economic issues will also be tackled. Studies of adaptation, change and conflict in small-scale situations enmeshed in wider currents of change will have a significant place in this range of foci.

We publish scholarly texts, both single-authored and collaborative as well as collections of thematically organized essays. The series aims to reach a core audience of anthropologists and Asian Studies specialists, but also to be accessible to a broader multidisciplinary readership.

Going the Whitemans Way:
Kinship and Marriage among Australian Aborigines
David McKnight
ISBN 0 7546 4238 0

The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia:
Humiliation, Transformation and the Nature of Cultural Change
Edited by Joel Robbins and Holly Wardlow
ISBN 0 7546 4312 3

Aboriginal Art, Identity and Appropriation
Elizabeth Burns Coleman
ISBN 0 7546 4403 0

First published 2005 by Ashgate

Publishing Published 2017 by Routledge
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Copyright Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathern 2005

Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathern have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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Expressive genres and historical change : Indonesia, Papua

New Guinea and Taiwan. - (Anthropology and cultural history in Asia and the Indo-Pacific)

1. Melanesians - Music - Social aspects 2. Melanesians - Social life and customs 3. Folk music - Melanesia 4. Expression

I. Stewart, Pamela J. II. Strathern, Andrew

781.6'29912

Expressive genres and historical change : Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Taiwan / edited by Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathern.

p. cm. -- (Anthropology and cultural history in Asia and the Indo-Pacific)

Includes index.

ISBN 0-7546-4418-9

1. Folklore--Indonesia. 2. Folklore--Papua New Guinea. 3. Folklore--Taiwan. 4. Folk songs, Indonesian. 5. Folk songs, Papuan. 6. Folk songs--Taiwan. I. Stewart, Pamela J. II. Strathern, Andrew. III. Series.

GR320.E96 2005
398.2'09953-dc22

2005003558

ISBN 13: 978-0-7546-4418-7 (hbk)

Cover A set of young girls, all elaborately decorated for an important occasion of exchange. The girl in the center has a head-dress of eagle feathers, elaborate loops of beads at her neck, and pearl-shell crescent, marsupial fur headband, and eyes that are accentuated with white earth ocher. (Mount Hagen, Papua New Guinea, 1960s.)

Volker Heeschen, Institut fr Ethnologie, LMU, Oettingenstrausse 67, D-80538, Muchen, Germany

Janet Hoskins, Anthropology Department, University of Southern California, University Village, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0032, USA

Tai-li Hu, Institue of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, Nankang, Taipei 115, Taiwan

Lisette Josephides, School of Anthropological Studies, Queens University Belfast, Belfast, BT7 INN, Northern Ireland, UK

Alan Rumsey, Department of Anthropology, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia

Anne Schiller, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, CB #8107, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695-8107, USA

Pamela J Stewart, Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA

Andrew Strathern, Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA

Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathem

Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathem

We are very pleased that this edited collection is included in the new series with Ashgate Publishing on Anthropology and Cultural History in Asia and the Indo-Pacific. It represents the sort of collaboration and perspectives that we hope will continue to appear in the Series as it develops over time. The topic of expressive genres and historical change is one that brings together in a deep and enduring way scholarly issues relating to language studies, anthropology, history, and aesthetics in a single analytical field. This volume is also intended as an example of cross-cultural comparative concerns that can link the Indo-Pacific together and provide a venue for exploratory work. We are very much aware that such a scholarly remit encourages the possibility of work that can go beyond the compass of the present set of studies; but these studies should be taken as pointing the way forward. The Papua New Guinea chapters are also intended to accomplish the complementary aim of focusing inward, and in detail, on issues of analysis that have not been made central previously, for reasons we discuss further in our Introduction. Song, dance, music, and verbal art, as well as other dramatic embodied displays, indeed have a potential to tell us much about places with which we identify. These aesthetic forms should be kept in mind by anthropologists and historians as much as by specialist scholars in culture and the arts.