Your own pigs you may not eat : a comparative study of New Guinea societies

Pigs, yams, valuables, and women are items of exchange throughout New Guinea. Their widespread ceremonial exchange, one of the most striking characteristics of New Guinea life, does not arise out of economic necessity. Rather, ceremonial exchange is a total social phenomenon in that the ritual distribution of large quantities of food and valuables reflects the interplay between kinship and marriage structures, the nature of political leadership, and the religious and symbolic systems found in these cultures. Your Own Pigs You May Not Eat is an admonition to exchange as well as a title.

The people's health, 1830-1910

The patient has been much neglected by medical historians: most medical history has been compiled by medically-trained men and published only for medical men. This social history of health and ill-health in Britain is conceived on a wider, more questioning scale than standard medical history. The survey ranges from maternal mortality to the management of the old and infirm, and hinges upon measuring the benefit accruing from the huge investment in the medical profession and sanitary improvement.

Kormilda, the way to tomorrow? : a study in Aboriginal education

Aborigines in Australia are demanding a kind of education that does not estrange Aboriginal children from their culture and their kin. This book discusses a situation in which such alienation was brought about. Kormilda College, a residential school for tribal Aborigines in the Northern Territory, is the focus of the study. In the college Dr Sommerlad observed young Aborigines trying to reconcile their own values and behaviour with those of the white teachers and administrators. Some students were unable to choose between black and white societies and became marginal members of both.

Fishing around the Monaro : a selection from The seven rivers

This is not a fishing guidebook or a how-to-fish book, but a book written, in the words of the author, "for the pleasure of going fishing again in retrospect along my favourite rivers". Reprinted from The Seven Rivers, Douglas Stewart's reminiscences of fishing in Australia and New Zealand, this collection is an affectionate evocation of the wildlife, the scenery, the fishermen and the fish of some of the rivers accessible to Canberra anglers.

Fragments of empire : a history of the western Pacific High Commission, 1877-1914

During the nineteenth century Britain{u2019}s overseas administrative responsibilities related not only to her major colonial dependencies but also to a multitude of small territories and islands, whither her citizens were drawn by evangelism or the lure of trade. Pre-eminent among such areas were the Western Pacific islands, where Britons seeking to collect copra, grow cotton, and recruit labourers for plantations in Fiji and Queensland constituted a problem in law and order.

China's world; the foreign policy of a developing state

Many books have been written about the Communist regime in China and its foreign policy. This is the first to approach the subject from the basis of domestic affairs. The author, with his special knowledge of contemporary China, has combined a study of the viceministerial structure of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with an examination of fundamental domestic developmental factors during the period 1949 to 1968.

The economic development of Thai agriculture

This book is concerned with the development of agriculture in a 'contact economy'- an economy lying on the boundary between subsistence farming and farming dependent on the market. Thailand was opened to trade with the West over a century ago, and Thai farmers became accustomed to selling their surplus produce regularly. But it is only very recently, with the development of a road network, that many farmers have come to find the surplus that they sell of equal importance to what they produce for their own use. Even now most of them feel that they must produce their own rice.

One father, one blood : descent and group structure among the Melpa people

The Mount Hagen people of the New Guinea Highlands have no indigenous centralised authority. They have, nonetheless, clear patterns of social order and leadership. The problem of how order is achieved in such societies has exercised anthropologists since the 1940s. It is also one of considerable relevance to New Guinea as it is emerging today. This study builds its case not only on the descent characteristics which have been stressed in African models of uncentralised societies but also on the activities of the {u2018}big-men{u2019} and the specific ideologies of the Hageners.

Attitudes and social conditions : essays

For his study of Western Australian attitudes towards Aborigines Dr Taft chose three samples: in Perth, where there arc few Aborigines; in a large country town with a reputation for bad relations between Europeans and Aborigines; and in a small country town where relations were good. He analyses these attitudes with respect to several variables and finds that the most important influences on the relationships are the effects of community norms. Some interesting aspects of European attitudes to one another also emerge.

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