What makes us different is what makes us human..
New Guinea Ethnography
By focusing on the accounts of individuals confronting colonial and postcolonial systems of power, we can witness agency in broader terms and analyze decisions and actions that are not easily categorized as either resistance or accomodation.
Scaglion, Richard and Marie Norman2000 Where resistance falls short: rethinking agency through biography. In Identity Work: Constructing Pacific Lives, edited by Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathern. University of Pittsburgh, p. 122.
A carver preparing a wooden figure for a man's initiation ceremony. These figures contain designs symbolic of ancestral spirits.
Abelam are famous for their artwork and for their majestic, towering men's houses which dominate village skylines. Painted faces, which represent the ancestral spirits, decorate the facades of Abelam ceremonial houses (as in the background).
1983 The Samukundi Abelam of New Guinea. Carnegie Magazine 61 (11).
During elaborate male initiation ceremonies, costumed dancers with towering headdresses adorned with colorful feathers perform on the ceremonial ground in front of the temples.
1997 Abelam: giant yams and cycles of sex, warfare and ritual. In Portraits of Culture: Ethnographic Originals. Volume 4: Asia and Oceania. M. Ember and C. R. Ember, eds, Prentice Hall, p. 266
Richard Scaglion
Dr. Scaglion's primary geographic interests lie in the Pacific Islands and insular Southeast Asia, where he specializes in Melanesia and in the comparative study of Austronesian societies. A recipient of a praxis award from the Washington Society for Professional Anthropologists, Scaglion's applied research has involved the anthropology of law and sustainable development in island nations. He has a special relationship with the Abelam people of New Guinea, with whom he has conducted long-term field research beginning in 1974.
Selected Publications
2002 Globalization of Food. Waveland Press.
2000 (with Marie Norman) Where resistance falls short: rethinking agency through biography. In Identity Work: Constructing Pacific Lives, ASAO Monograph 18, edited by P. Stewart and A. Strathern, pp. 121-131.
1999 Yam cycles and "timeless time" in Melanesia. Ethnology 38:211-225.
1996 Chiefly models in Papua, New Guinea. The Contemporary Pacific 8:1-31.