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Humors and Substances

Ideas of the Body in New Guinea

Andrew Strathern author Professor Pamela J Stewart author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Humors and Substances cover

This book considers in depth the emergent theme of concerns over bodily fluids in health and wellness through an examination of a rich set of ethnographic materials from the Pacific islands of New Guinea. The particular structure of the book draws together otherwise disparate observations made by ethnographers on ideas of the body. It helps to reveal how these are related to ideas of sickness and curing, of witchcraft, of cannibalism, of gender relations, and of ecology and ritual. It facilitates cross-cultural comparisons with other parts of the world, as well as making clear the fundamental similarities between the societies of Irian Jaya and Papua New Guinea. It also discusses the idea of the cosmos and its centrality to ideological representations of the physical and social body. Society is seen to be part of the cosmos, and the human body directly linked to, and in cyclical flow with, the elements of the life-world in general, and society in particular.

ISBN: 9780897897624

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 454g

176 pages