The Severed Snake

Examining the secretive dynamics of competing land claims among the Arosi of the island of Makira (Solomon Islands), Michael W. Scott demonstrates the explanatory power of ethnographic attention to the nexus between practice and indigenous theories of being. His focus on the ways in which Arosi understand their matrilineages to be the bearers of discrete categorical essences exclusively emplaced in ancestral territories forms the basis for a timely and accessible rethink of current anthropological representations of Melanesian sociality and opens up new lines of inquiry into the transformative relationships among gendered metaphors of descent, processes of place making, and the indigenization of Christianity. Informed by original historical research and newly documented variants of regionally important mythic traditions, The Severed Snake is a work of multidisciplinary scope that proposes critical and methodological shifts relevant to historians, development professionals, folklorists, and scholars of religion as well as anthropologists.

ISBN 1594601534   DEWEY 305.8995 ISBN13 9781594601538 (What's this?)   DEWEY edition DC22 Publisher Carolina Academic Press   Pages 414 Imprint Carolina Academic Press   Volumes 001 Format Paperback   Published in Durham, NC Publication date 23 Feb 2007   Series title Ritual Studies Monograph Series Library of Congress DU850   Academic level Undergraduate

		Introduction : comparative ontology		3
Ch. 1		The appearance of an Arosi village		37
Ch. 2		Moving toward heterotopia		69
Ch. 3		"Where is the Kastom landowner?" : Maasina rule in Arosi		105
Ch. 4		Cutting the cord : reproduction as cosmogony		131
Ch. 5		Re-presenting autochthonous histories		163
Ch. 6		Being and becoming Auhenua		201
Ch. 7		Present primordialities		229
Ch. 8		The severed snake : scales of origin		261
Ch. 9		Arosi ethno-theologies		301

 Be the first to write a customer review