The Gift of Kinship: Structure and Practice in Maring Social Organization - Hardcover

LiPuma, Edward

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521344832 ISBN 13: 9780521344838

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1988

Synopsis

Although the societies of the New Guinea Highlands have been extensively studied by anthropologists since the Second World War, it is generally acknowledged that a comprehensive explanation of their social structure is yet to emerge. In this book, Edward LiPuma presents an ethnography of Maring social organization in order to develop a generative theory of Highland societies that takes account of both social structure and its reproduction in practice. Arguing for the inseparability of the symbolic and the material, norm and action, and structure and practice, the study has three objectives. The first is to demonstrate how cultural categories fashion generative schemes for practice, and how practice in turn reproduces social groups and the concepts they embody. The second is to develop through ethnography an analysis of the relationship between structure and practice, while the third is to identify some of the ways in which the situation of the ethnographer informs the production of ethnography and the making of theory.

About this title

Book Description

In this book, Edward LiPuma presents an ethnography of Maring social organization in order to develop a generative theory of Highland societies that takes account of both social structure and its reproduction in practice. Arguing for the inseparability of the symbolic and the material, norm and action, and structure and practice, the study has three objectives.

Synopsis

An ethnography of Maring social organization which aims to develop a new generative theory of highland societies that takes account of both social structure and social reproduction.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 1988
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521344832
• ISBN 13: 9780521344838
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 251