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By James F. Weiner
For the Foi those that continue to exist the sting of the imperative highlands of Papua New Guinea, the movement of pearl shells is the "heart" in their social existence. The pearl shell is the trade merchandise that mediates the production in their most vital sexual and social roles. the center of the Pearl Shell analyzes a few myths of the Foi humans, elegantly bringing jointly major ethnographic fabrics in a manner that has very important implications for the advance of social concept in anthropology and in Melanesian reviews. students of semiotic-symbolic anthropology and of comparative faith also will proportion the author's curiosity within the which means and function of mythology in Foi culture.Instead of counting on orthodox equipment of Freudian or structuralist interpretation, James Weiner assumes there's a dialectical courting among the pictures of Foi fable and the pictures of the Foi's social global. He demonstrates how each one set of those photographs depends upon the opposite for its construction. This cutting edge learn locates Foi social which means within the new version and tried answer of the ethical dilemmas which are crystallized in mythology and different poetic usages.
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Extra info for The Heart of the Pearl Shell: The Mythological Dimension of Foi Sociality (Studies in Melanesian Anthropology, 5)
Sample text
Of this ritual pantomime acted by the wau appears to me to be a representation of the birth of the little girl from the belly of her mother's brother, though none of my male informants (in Kankanamun where I made enquiries) had ever heard of the custom of tying the woman in labour on a stretcher. The dance of the mbora (mother's brother's wife), with her arms stretched back behind her head, also probably represents the position of a woman in labour. A general presentation of food and valuables followed this ceremony.
Thus we have worked down from the study of cultural individual processes to the study of individual psychology, linking the " scale by the abstract 1 concept of the stan- two ends of the dardised individual Returning now ". raw material of anthropology, the down by the field worker, we may see the whole of this mass as relevant to a final facts of native to the behaviour noted separable discipline. This is concerned with the effects of behaviour in satisfying the needs of groups of individuals, in maintaining or impeding the continued existence of that abstract organism the Society.
Using the term in this sense might say that the naven ceremonies are a function of we all those elements of culture or properties of society upon whose presence the existence of the ceremonies depends. If, further, it can be shown that the naven ceremonies play some part in the integration of the community, we may say that the size of the latmul villages is a function of amongst other things The Concepts of Structure and Function 27 the naven ceremonies. This is a perfectly consistent and logical use of the term and one which anthropologists might do well to adopt.