This wide-ranging volume captures the diverse range of societies and experiences that form what has come to be known as Melanesia. It covers prehistoric, historic and contemporary issues, and includes work by art historians, political scientists, geographers and anthropologists. The chapters range from studies of subsistence, ritual and ceremonial exchange to accounts of state violence, new media and climate change. The ‘Melanesian world’ assembled here raises questions that cut to the heart of debates in the human sciences today, with profound implications for the ways in which scholars across disciplines can describe and understand human difference. This impressive collection of essays represents a valuable resource for scholars and students alike.

Charles Gabriel Seligman (1873-1940) was a British ethnographer who conducted field research in New Guinea, Sarawak, Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka), and Sudan. Trained as a medical doctor, in 1898 he joined an expedition organized by Cambridge University to the Torres Strait, the body of water that separates the island of New Guinea from Australia. The purpose of the expedition was to document the cultures of the Torres Strait islanders, which were rapidly disappearing under the influence of colonization. In 1904, Seligman was one of three members of the Cooke Daniels Ethnographic Expedition to British New Guinea, funded by Denver, Colorado department store owner William Cooke Daniels. The Melanesians of British New Guinea contains a detailed record of much of Seligman's anthropological research conducted during the expedition. Seligman's findings demonstrated the striking physical and cultural differences between the western Papuans and his main preoccupation, their eastern neighbors, who had been more influenced by Melanesian immigration. The book established Seligman's reputation as an anthropologist, and remains an important source for the study of the traditional culture of the peoples of present-day Papua New Guinea. The book includes photographs, drawings, maps, and a glossary of indigenous terms.

Am invariable guide and analysis to pressing issues of religious and Soviet change in the Pacific.

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!