The communities of south coast New Guinea were the subject of classic ethnographies, and fresh studies in recent decades have put these rich and complex cultures at the centre of anthropological debates. Flamboyant sexual practices, such as ritual homosexuality, have attracted particular interest. In the first general book on the region, Dr Knauft reaches striking new comparative conclusions through a careful ethnographic analysis of sexuality, the status of women, ritual and cosmology, political economy, and violence among the region's seven major language-culture areas. The findings suggest new Melanesian regional contrasts and provide for a general critique of the way regional comparisons are constructed in anthropology. Theories of practice and political economy as well as post-modern insights are drawn upon to provide a generative theory of indigenous social and symbolic development.

The Contributions to the Sociology of Language series features publications dealing with sociolinguistic theory, methods, findings and applications. It addresses the study of language in society in its broadest sense, as a truly international and interdisciplinary field in which various approaches - theoretical and empirical - supplement and complement each other. The series invites the attention of scholars interested in language in society from a broad range of disciplines - anthropology, education, history, linguistics, political science, and sociology. To discuss your book idea or submit a proposal, please contact Natalie Fecher.

This book investigates the art and architecture of Papua New Guinean spirit structures with a multi-perspectival approach that combines cultural and social sciences with building, architectural, and spatial research. It offers the first comprehensive study of the spirit houses of New Guinea that exists to date. The book’s aim is twofold: First, it aims to investigate the spirit structures and their associated cultural cosmos in detail. For this purpose, a representative selection of traditional buildings and artworks from different regions of Papua New Guinea is documented and analyzed, and theories for their understanding are formulated. In this course, the author develops a spatial theory of anthropological concepts – such as myths, signs, persons, and rituals. Secondly, this analysis is then situated in the broader context of the Anthropocene/Kaiaimunucene. Transforming the historical spirit structures into models for future-oriented cultural imagination, the consequences for contemporary productions of space and ways of worldmaking in light of existential challenges are traced. The book thus offers more-than-human and more-than-secular concepts for building, art, and worldmaking that are of critical importance in the ongoing Anthropocene/Kaiaimunucene. It will be of interest to researchers and students of architecture, anthropology, cultural studies, environmental humanities, and adjacent disciplines. Part I of the book was translated from German by Melanie Janet Sindelar.

The paucity of published material on the borders of New Guinea and the international significance of the Irian boundary led me to bring together the information I had gathered over the past few years. Ideally, a book of this kind should cover the subject in its total historical and geographical context. The aim of this work is more modest: it intends merely to throw some light on the birth and development of New Guinea's boundaries. With this purpose in mind, after an introductory chapter attention is given to the historical events leading up to the parti tion of New Guinea among three European powers. In subsequent chapters the development of the boundaries between the various parts of the island is discussed. It is realized that this approach may tend to convey the impression that each particular border is in some way unique. This, however, is not intended and it is hoped that the reader will recognize some of the common underlying themes and problems which are given attention in the introductory and concluding chapters. It was intended originally to present in a brief appendix those docu ments which define the borders. It soon appeared desirable to include also the unpublished records of more recent border conferences and relevant correspondence leading up to the actual treaties, exchange of notes, Orders in Council, or (as the case might be) lack of action.