Full Description
What is creative in kinship? How are people connected to places? James Leach answers these questions through formulating "creativity" as an integral part of kinship on the north coast of Papua New Guinea. The book contains a new critique of the genealogical model of kinship, suggesting that this model prevents us from grasping the way generative relations, including those to land and place, constitute persons on the Rai Coast. Analytic attention is focused upon the life cycle, marriage, exchange and artistic production as the activities in which substantial connection is generated. The argument, made in relation to detailed ethnography, yields a fresh perspective on the connections people trace to each other.
Contents
List of Maps, Figures, Tables, and Photographs
Notes on the Text
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction: The Rai Coast
Chapter 1. Process and Kinship
Kinship, Process, and Creativity
Cognation and Flexibility
An Alternative to the Genealogical Model
The Palem
Chapter 2. Residence History and Palem
Hamlets Past and Present
Hamlets as Social Groups
The Labours of Lawrence Complexity
Chapter 3. Marrying Sisters
Defining Relationships
Myths and Explanations
Chapter 4. Gardens, Land, and Growth
Origin Points
Gendered Productivity: The Tambaran Households and Gardens
Gardening, not 'Production'
Gardens, Land, and Substance
Male Continuity, Female Movement
Chapter 5. Birth, Emergence, and Exchange
The Transactions Between Affinal Kin Focused on Children
Mother's Brothers in the Anthropological Literature
Affinal Payments and Lineality in Reite
Visibility and Recognition
Chapter 6. Spirit, Flesh, and Bone
The Palem as a Body
Performing Places
People and Spirits as Land Made Mobile
Chapter 7. Places and Bodies, Landscape and Perception
The Concept of Landscape in Anthropology
Hearing and Vision as Sensory Modalities
Landscape in the Nekgini Lifeworld
Chapter 8. Creative Land
Land, Place, and Person
Simple Principles, Complex Process
Creativity
Glossary
References
Index
