Men and 'Woman' in New Guinea.

Men and 'Woman' in New Guinea. Men and 'Woman' in New Guinea New Guinea(gĭn`ē), island, c.342,000 sq mi (885,780 sq km), SW Pacific, N of Australia; the world's second largest island after Greenland. By L.L.Langness Novato, California Novato is a city located in the North Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, in northern Marin County. As of a 2000 census, the city population was 47,630. Novato is 30 miles north of San Francisco on US 101. : Chandler & Sharp, Publishers, Inc. Pp.xvi + 208 Price: US$15.95 The overall project of this book is to deal with gender identityand male initiation rites in New Guinea. Langness ultimately proposes an'Ur culture' for New Guinea the traces of which exist inbeliefs about blood, bone and semen that are common to all New Guineansocieties. These emerge from a religious system and inform maledominance. As sub themes he attempts to come to terms with the postmodem critique and the changes in the analysis of gender relations inMelanesian ethnography over the last thirty years. The textunfortunately does not uphold its arguments nor does it provide anyfurther ethnographic insight. The book begins with a thumbnail sketch of the Korofeigu, Bena Benapeople of the eastern highlands of Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea(păp`ə, –y . This chapter is byfar the most informative and provides an incisive description of thepeople with whom Langness worked. In this chapter he draws an effectivepicture of life among the Korofeigu and the way that male/femalerelations are constructed. This is followed by a series of chapterswhich lack coherence and at times seem to be separate papers that havethe odd 'joining sentence' rather than being part of the sametext. A chapter on violence is followed by one on the applicability ofFreudian analysis, specifically relating the Oedipal complex, tounderstandings of male/female relationships in New Guinea. He then moveson to a chapter about exegeses and their consequences returning inchapter five to a discussion of semen and bone. Chapters six and seven,the first being an analysis of the importance of semen and bone to NewGuinean understandings of life and the universe, the seco nd adiscussion of the variety of initiation rites and their consequences formale/female relations pan New Guinea, are the most coherent grouping inthe book. There are a number of major problems with the book. The author isconcerned that ethnographers of New Guinea deal too much with differenceand have not been as keen to point out similarity. Specifically hefocuses on the importance of blood, bones and semen and theirrelationship to male initiation ceremonies. He has provided an analysiswhich seems to owe something to Jung but with very little discussionabout archetypes and certainly without the subtlety that analyst broughtto bear on comparative material. Moreover he has not taken account ofindigenous impulses to create difference when similarity is obvious. Inshort the similarities he, and many other ethnographers deal with, arealways engaged in the specific understandings of the people under study.Homogenization homogenization(həmŏj'ənəzā`shən), process in which a mixture is made uniform throughout. Generally this procedure involves reducing the size of the particles of one component of the mixture and dispersing them evenly and sweeping generalizations reached by dipping into thevast ethnographic data on New Guinea and long, inappropriate quotationsdo not successfully sustain his argument. There are also some importantomissions when the arguments about the treatment of maleness,reproduction and indigenous cosmologies are made. Two compelling movements over the last twenty years TWENTY YEARS. The lapse of twenty years raises a presumption of certain facts, and after such a time, the party against whom the presumption has been raised, will be required to prove a negative to establish his rights. 2. in anthropologyhave been the post modem critique and the development of feministanalysis. Langness has an idiosyncratic id��i��o��syn��cra��sy?n. pl. id��i��o��syn��cra��sies1. A structural or behavioral characteristic peculiar to an individual or group.2. A physiological or temperamental peculiarity.3. reading of both. He seems tohave taken the post modern critique of anthropology to be a criticism ofindividual ethnographers missing the seriousness of the critique. Hedoes not examine the overall conditions of anthropology and its positionas a part of a dominant male world view. His response to such concernsis that people do ethnography at different times and with varyingdegrees of success. This leads to a curious quirk of the author who hasembedded in the book a dialogue with a number of commentators while hefalls to provide a context for their work. The issues that Langness raises are important. Specifically, theway that male initiation reveals aspects of gender relatedness andindigenous understandings of maleness and femaleness always requirespecial consideration in the Melanesian material. However this bookfalls far short of doing justice to the problems it invokes. Kerry Zubrinich Charles Sturt University Charles Sturt University (CSU) is an Australian multi-campus university in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory. It has campuses at Bathurst, Albury-Wodonga, Dubbo, Orange and Wagga Wagga.