David Lipset

What makes a man? Rereading Naven and The Gender of the Gift, 2004

In this essay, I argue that the concept of masculinity that was first developed in Batesons Naven, his 1936 monograph about ritual and society among the Iatmul, a New Guinea people, was an originary moment for the constructivist position that has come to hold sway, not only over masculinity studies in Melanesia in specific, but over masculinity studies in general. My thesis, however, advances a more definite claim: Batesons prescient view of gender did not come to theoretical maturity in masculinity studies, either areally, or more broadly defined, for another 50 years, when it was given new articulation by Marilyn Strathern in The Gender of the Gift (1988). In order to make the connection I see between these two books, I first reread Batesons argument in Naven with regard to its view of Iatmul masculinity. I then turn to Marilyn Stratherns conception of gender in Melanesia, again with an emphasis on masculinity. After discussing my claim that the one gave rise to important dimensions of the other, I conclude by briefly defending that assertion against a methodological challenge, that of Whig interpretation, which is inevitably raised against this kind of intellectual history.

Place in the Anthropocene: A mangrove lagoon in Papua New Guinea in the time of rising sea-levels

This article is an ethnographic account of one place during an unpromising moment in an epoch some have begun to call the Anthropocene. In the Murik Lakes, at the mouth of the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea, the Anthropocene calls logocentric and political views of “place” into question. Instead of being a site where the world is endowed with moral personhood, or where dialogue takes place with the global, “place” has now taken on a dark, conditional mood. In the Anthropocene, “place” is a site of pending tragedy, pervaded by the loss, rather than the creation, of meaning.

On The Bridge: Class and the Chronotope of Modern Romance in an American Love Story

In the anthropology of romance in North America, little research has been done on 1) the relationship between love and society, and 2) love narratives. Drawing from Bakhtin’s notion of the chronotope (1981; , ) and sociology of aesthetic taste, this article presents an exegesis of one falling-in-love narrative elicited from a young, middle-class man. As attraction develops episodically in the narrative, shared aesthetic tastes overcome perceived differences. During such moments, which I call chronotopes of modern romance, spatial and temporal boundaries break down and agency is called into question. I argue that in this case, a middleclass background not only appears to influence the tastes which lovers disclose to one another, the most conspicuous being their attraction for each other, but it also imbues the very chronotope of romance in which they do so.

O que faz um homem? Relendo Naven e The Gender of the Gift

In this essay, I argue that the concept of masculinity that was first developed in Batesons Naven, his 1936 monograph about ritual and society among the Iatmul, a New Guinea people, was an originary moment for the constructivist position that has come to hold sway, not only over masculinity studies in Melanesia in specific, but over masculinity studies in general. My thesis, however, advances a more definite claim: Batesons prescient view of gender did not come to theoretical maturity in masculinity studies, either areally, or more broadly defined, for another 50 years, when it was given new articulation by Marilyn Strathern in The Gender of the Gift (1988).

Artifacts of Encounter: Cook’s Voyages, Colonial Collecting and Museum Histories, edited by Nicholas Thomas, Julie Adams, Billie Lythberg, Maia Nuku and Amiria Salmond

itical, environmental and vocational uncertainty, where every issue seems confoundingly and overwhelmingly intertwined with countless others, and on a planetary scale. Thus the authors affirm and demonstrate that ‘rather than going in infinite directions and being totally overwhelmed, it is possible to do global studies research in an orderly and manageable way’ (54). The Global Turn will be a valuable resource in guiding researchers on how to do this.

Introduction: Masculinity, Modernity, Papua New Guinea

This book focuses on dimensions of alienation among Murik men who live in rural and peri-urban communities in a new postcolonial state, Papua New Guinea (PNG). Four concepts that orient it are introduced: the sociology and anthropology of masculinity, modernity theory, a sociological and Lacanian view of alienation and a Bakhtinian notion of dialogue. An overview of institutional and rural aspects of men in the postcolonial state of PNG is presented. The main institutions in Murik society are then outlined as are summaries of each chapter.

Desire in Young Men’s Courtship Stories

The sociological literature on romantic love has largely sought to explain its presence, by reference to historical causes, social structure, socio-economic functions or charismatic appeal. This chapter reverses this question by asking how, in the absence of romance discourse, young Murik men talk about courtship. Trends in marriage in the Pacific are discussed. An overview of the role of desire in the organization of Murik marriage is presented. The chapter employs the Bakhtinian concept of chronotope, which has to do with the construction of time and space in narrative. A Homeric chronotope of desire, in which desire is not overtly expressed, is then analyzed in several Murik courtship narratives. Courtship discourse, it is concluded, sheds light on an important dimension of masculine dialogue with Murik culture and modernity in Papua New Guinea (PNG).

Money and Other Signifiers

The public masquerade I call the “Gaingiin Society” consists of ranked spirit-masks which afford men a measure of veiled agency in village space. Divided into seven named age-grades, each one initiated its junior grade into its mask when they fulfilled certain obligations. The most senior masks used to be exchanged in return for younger men’s wives’ sexual services. In 1988, money was substituted for sexual intercourse during a grade-taking rite. This substitution took place in the broader context in which modern tokens of value, such as fiberglass boats and outboard motors, have replaced archaic forms of Murik material culture, like outrigger canoes. The semantic extensions of Murik meaning that some of them have received—such as cars being called canoes—give voice to a fairly equivocal dialogue in which men’s alienation has doubled.

In the Anthropocene

One aspect of the Anthropocene, the “human-dominated geologic epoch,” that has received less attention is the estrangements it produces among the people living in its space and time. Wet-season tides began to extend to unusually high distances along the Murik coast in late 2007. They knocked down coconut palms, eroded beaches and sometimes broke through the narrow seashore, raising the prospect of resettlement. Returning to Bakhtin’s concept of chronotope, the chapter focuses on modern and Anthropocene-based chronotopes as well as the chronotope of archaic Murik masculinity and the chronotope of doubt found in local-level debates about the meanings of rising sea levels. As a whole, the Anthropocene is a new context of the dual alienation of Murik men.

Folk Theater and the Signifier

Murik men used to be the leading impresarios of the most valued of all regional goods in the Sepik/Northcoast region. They specialized in the trade of folk theater, or what Margaret Mead called “dance-complexes,” to local-level leaders. One of the important male voices in the 1990s and the new millennium expressed itself in terms of this very practice—that of theatrical representation and performance. A new piece of Murik folk theater emerged in the early 1990s. It appeared in a dream to its “author,” and was then exchanged with hereditary Murik trading partners and performed at national celebrations in town in subsequent years. The piece did not merely extend the regional renown of Murik men. Borrowing several concepts from Lacanian psychoanalysis, ethnography of the show reveals further expressions of men’s alienation from both Murik culture as well as modernity in PNG.