Payback: The Logic of Retribution in Melanesian Religions (Paperback)

Garry W. Trompf

ISBN 10: 0521062772 / ISBN 13: 9780521062770

Published by Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2008

About this Item

Paperback. Near to the heart of the human predicament are impulses to avenge - what most of us will recognize to be negative, counterproductive reactions against others who pose a threat. By contrast, nothing re-establishes our faith in humanity more than extraordinary acts of concession, such as peace-making, generosity and sacrifice. In this study Garry Trompf shows how various aspects of 'payback', both negative and positive, provide the best indices to an understanding of Melanesian views of life. The book explores the reasons why people 'pay back' and opens up a whole dimension in the cross-cultural study of human consciousness. The author conducts his readers through the most complex anthropological pageant on earth, illustrating his arguments from western New Guinea to Fiji. In this ambitious study, the first monograph on religion and "the logic of retribution," Professor Trompf shows how various aspects of "payback," both negative and positive, provide the best indices to an understanding of Melanesian views of life. The book explores the reasons why people "pay back" and opens up a whole new dimension in the cross-cultural study of human consciousness. The author conducts his readers through the most complex anthropological pageant on earth, illustrating his arguments from western New Guinea to Fiji. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9780521062770

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Payback: The Logic of Retribution in Melanesian Religions (Paperback)
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
• Publication Date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521062772
• ISBN 13: 9780521062770
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

Near to the heart of the human predicament are impulses to avenge - what most of us will recognize to be negative, counterproductive reactions against others who pose a threat. By contrast, nothing re-establishes our faith in humanity more than extraordinary acts of concession, such as peace-making, generosity and sacrifice. In this study Garry Trompf shows how various aspects of 'payback', both negative and positive, provide the best indices to an understanding of Melanesian views of life. The book explores the reasons why people 'pay back' and opens up a whole dimension in the cross-cultural study of human consciousness. The author conducts his readers through the most complex anthropological pageant on earth, illustrating his arguments from western New Guinea to Fiji.

Review

"In this fascinating book, Trompf brings to fruition fifteen years of unstinting research on religion in the southwest Pacific region....Trompf's breadth of erudition and vision...is bound to stir fresh and stimulating debate, not only because it interprets the world of Melanesian retributive logics but also because it takes on the task of changing them." History of Religions

"Trompf pointedly rebukes materialist theories of human behavior and also notions of primitive irrationality....The volume combines an extraordinary, even numbing, assortment of ethnographic detail with a simple, unitary, explanatory premise." Lamont Lindstrom, The Contemporary Pacific