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Neither 'New Melanesian History' nor 'New Melanesian Ethnography': recovering emplaced matrilineages in Southeast Solomon Islands.(Report)
- Article from:
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Oceania
- Article date:
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November 1, 2007
- Author:
- Scott, Michael W.
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Copyright informationCOPYRIGHT 2007 University of Sydney. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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For two decades, Melanesianists have sought to reconcile what Robert Foster (1995) termed the 'New Melanesian History' and the 'New Melanesian Ethnography'. The former describes historically oriented studies that critique representations of Melanesian custom as recent objectifications of strategically positioned discourses and practices. The latter describes culturally oriented, particularist studies that characterize Melanesian sociality as an undifferentiated plane of being without integral a priori units; on every scale, human agency must individuate persons and collectivities by means of 'fraction', 'deconception', and 'decomposition'. In this article I present data from Solomon ...