Description

Zaria's Fire: Engendered Moments in Manam Ethnography Nancy C. Lutkehaus ISBN 9780890898000

In a striking example of dialogical anthropology, Nancy Lutkehaus weaves together the voices of three generations of Manam Islanders with those of two women anthropologists who lived and worked among them—one British, from England’s intellectual elite, and one middle-class American—to create a rich, cross-cultural dialogue on gender, power, authority, and the legacies of colonialism in Papua New Guinea. Drawing on unpublished diaries, notebooks, and photographs of 1930s anthropologist Camilla Wedgwood, Lutkehaus juxtaposes Wedgwood’s observations with her own contemporary fieldwork and the accounts of government officials, Catholic missionaries, and local scholars. This interplay contrasts Wedgwood’s narrative of cultural decline with Lutkehaus’s depiction of Manam resilience and continuity.

Beyond offering a reinterpretation of Manam history or explaining why Wedgwood’s prediction of cultural collapse proved inaccurate, Lutkehaus’s work illuminates broader shifts in anthropological knowledge and methodology. She situates Wedgwood’s interpretations within the colonial framework of British social anthropology, shaped by mentors Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown, highlighting how epistemological assumptions influenced the understanding of Manam society between the world wars.

Zaria's Fire: Engendered Moments in Manam Ethnography Nancy C. Lutkehaus ISBN 9780890898000, 978-0890898000 & 978-08908-98000

Author
Nancy C. Lutkehaus