Track My Order
Help Centre
Likes
My Wish ListsLogin / Join
Booktopia
Australia's local bookstore
Get Free Shipping on orders over $79
Ancestral Presence : Cosmology and Historical Experience in the Papuan Highlands - Eric Hirsch

Ancestral Presence

Cosmology and Historical Experience in the Papuan Highlands

By: Eric Hirsch

eText | 28 December 2020 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

eText

$100.09

or 4 interest-free payments of $25.02 with

 or 

Instant online reading in your Booktopia eTextbook Library *

Why choose an eTextbook?

Instant Access *

Purchase and read your book immediately

Read Aloud

Listen and follow along as Bookshelf reads to you

Study Tools

Built-in study tools like highlights and more

* eTextbooks are not downloadable to your eReader or an app and can be accessed via web browsers only. You must be connected to the internet and have no technical issues with your device or browser that could prevent the eTextbook from operating.

Ancestral Presence tells a history that has more than one history in it while also telling the story of the relation between worlds.

For the Fuyuge people of the Papuan highlands, the past is not 'history' in a conventional sense. For them, the world and its history derive from a creator force called Tidibe which is central to Fuyuge cosmology: the Fuyuge are at the 'centre of the world'. But Fuyuge people are part of another history, too: they have experienced decades of mission and government influence from centres of power located elsewhere, to which their mountain home is marginal and remote. Through a detailed exploration of Fuyuge myth, changes to ritual life and cosmology, Eric Hirsch weaves an account of the relationship between these two histories. He documents the real changes wrought by colonialism, government and Christianity from the late nineteenth century to the turn of the millennium. Yet this is not a story of 'continuity and change'. Hirsch demonstrates how transformation was always central to Fuyuge life: changes brought by missionaries and government were processes they themselves initiated in the ancestral past through Tidibe, the cosmological creator force.

Engaging in debates that have been pivotal to Melanesian anthropology, the book presents an ethnographically rich account of a distinctive world, cosmology and ideas of historical change. It also raises questions regarding assumptions central to Western History, its worldview and ideas of historical time.

on
Desktop
Tablet
Mobile

You Can Find This eBook In

Non-FictionSociology & AnthropologyAnthropologySocial & Cultural Anthropology, Ethnography

Other Editions and Formats

Paperback

Published: 1st August 2022

View Product

More in Anthropology

Mules and Men - Zora Neale Hurston

eBOOK

Mules and Men

eBook

$26.99

Growing Up Chicana/o - Bill Adler

eBOOK

Growing Up Chicana/o

eBook

$5.99

This product is categorised by