This Introduction to the Anthropology of Melanesia is intended for undergraduate anthropology students with some grounding in the issues and ideas that inform the discipline, and for courses in Pacific Studies. Each chapter focuses on a topic common to many cultures in the region, such as the role of so-called Big Men, ancestors, male initiation, and exchange, and these ideas are fleshed out with apt ethnographic examples. Melanesia is a fascinating culture area, and has always been a popular fieldwork site for anthropologists, including W. H. R. Rivers, Bronislaw Malinowski, Margaret Mead, and Gregory Bateson. Some of the most important theoretical contributions to the subject were also first formulated with reference to Melanesian studies, and students today still learn much of their basic anthropology from Melanesian examples.

"This book provides the first overall survey of the peoples and cultures of Micronesia since the anthropological information explosion on the area began in the 1950s. It attempts to summarize these studies in a logical and coherent fashion. Ten island societies of Micronesia have been selected and discussed in some detail; these societies reflect a range of cultural adaptations to the varying microenvironments of the region. An attempt is made throughout to emphasize similarities in organizational patterns, where such exist, without losing sight of individuality."--Preface.

Melanesian History and Culture. Tradition, People and Migration. A Book on Melanesia History and Culture, travel and tourism. The cultural variation in Melanesia, particularly in Papua New Guinea, is unique in the history of human societies. Residents of Papua New Guinea, who number nearly 4 million today, speak one-quarter of the world's languages, around 800 distinct tongues. Many of these languages are spoken by fewer than 1,000 people and many are in danger of disappearing altogether with the spread of two common languages, English and New Guinea Tok Pisin. Fortunately, the Summer Institute of Linguistics, an adjunct to the country's Christian missions, has done a great deal of linguistic work in Papua New Guinea. For more than 30 years, the Institute has documented grammars and lexicons of New Guinea dialects

In the early 21st century, intellectual and cultural resources emerge on all sides as candidates for ownership claims. Members of an anthropological research team investigating emergent economic relations in a part of the world renowned for its innovative approach to resources and transactions, wish to open up the vocabulary. In this unique volume, they bring an unexpected comparative perspective to global debates on intellectual and cultural property rights (IPR and CPR). The contributors bring from Melanesia their collective experience of people initiating, limiting and rationalizing claims through transactions in ways that challenge many of the assumptions behind the international language. In a bold theoretical move, "property" is put alongside two other terms: "transactions" and "creations." The former have a place in the anthropological tradition that now needs to be brought into the foreground. In turn, increasing interest in protecting intellectual and cultural resources means that questions about creativity have suddenly become pertinent to what is or is not being transacted. Yet is creativity a special preoccupation of modernity? How are we to talk about people's creative practices, when innovation becomes the basis for ownership claims? This book is full of surprises!