Gender, Song, and Sensibility: Folktales and Folksongs in the Highlands of New Guinea

(Hardback)

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The authors present a historical picture of gender relations in Highlands New Guinea by exploring domains of imagination as revealed in courting songs, ballads, and folktales from across the Highlands but with particular reference to field areas in the western Highlands. Texts and/or translations are from a rich corpus of materials previously unpublished in English. The examples draw the reader into the imaginative world of the people, while the analytical framework sets the discussion firmly into debates within interpretive anthropology. The aim is to re-examine the images of gender relations in Highlands New Guinea by revealing the sensuous and emotional modalities of expressive folk genres and their aesthetic qualities. Ideas and practices centered on female spirit entities are shown to be important and pervasive in cult contexts, and these spirits were felt to have a significant influence on relations of courtship, marriage, and reproduction. Both women and men are also shown to have complex expressions of emotional dispositions in the spheres of courting and the choice of marital partners. By entering into these domains, the book modifies earlier analyses that have concentrated on antagonism, behavioral taboos, separation, and domination as themes in gender relations in Highland societies.

Reviews

Gender, Song, and Sensibility: Folktales and Folksongs in the Highlands of New Guinea presents an important case for alternative conceptions of gender and sexuality in the Paupa New Guinea Highlands....achieves the expressed aim of contesting and modifying existing stereotypes about gender relations in the Highlands of New Guinea. On this basis alone, it significantly contributes not only to the Highlands ethnographic record, but also to the analysis of gender relations more generally.-H-Net Reviews
"Gender, Song, and Sensibility: Folktales and Folksongs in the Highlands of New Guinea presents an important case for alternative conceptions of gender and sexuality in the Paupa New Guinea Highlands....achieves the expressed aim of contesting and modifying existing stereotypes about gender relations in the Highlands of New Guinea. On this basis alone, it significantly contributes not only to the Highlands ethnographic record, but also to the analysis of gender relations more generally."-H-Net Reviews

Author Bio

PAMELA J. STEWART is Research Associate in the Department of Anthropology and the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. ANDREW STRATHERN is Mellon Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh.