Mortuary Feasting on New Ireland The Activation of Matriliny Among the Sursurunga

Subjects:

• Anthropology » Cultural Anthropology
• Multicultural Studies » Oceania Studies

Reviews:

• Appropriate for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and professionals interested in kinship, cognition, and mortuary practice.
  —Choice

• Endorsement From Kevin Birth
  Queens
  CUNY: From the perspective of Susurunga language, cognition, and mortuary practice, Bolyanatz provides vital new insights into how matriliny is constituted and experienced. Through his analysis, kinship ceases to consist of systems of abstract principles, but instead becomes embedded in key moments in people's lives that are laden with meaning and emotion. This approach breathes new life into the study of one anthropology's great debates, the persistence of matrilineal descent, and it raises crucial issues for the study of kinship, in general.
• Endorsement From Jim Wilce, Assistant Professor
  Anthropology Department
  Northern Arizona University: Bolyanatz's finely researched and winsomely written account of Sursurunga kinship offers great insights not only into the local phenomena that constitute kinship, but more generally into the dialectic between social structure and activity, especially mortuary feasting. His orientation to action, history, and persons leads him to explore the power of linguistic categories in actual discourse to make salient or perhaps even constitute the lived meanings of relatedness for Sursurunga people. His book thus makes rewarding reading for students of society, language, and structuration.

Table of Contents:

• Preface
• A Note About Language
• Introduction
• Sursurunga Historical and Ethnographic Milieux: Contact, Christianity, Cash and Context
• Land and Matriliny
• Rethinking the Logic of Matriliny
• Sursurunga Mortuary Feasting
• The Antecedents of Mortuary Feasting
• Consequents of Mortuary Feasting: the Salience and Activation of Matriliny
• Conclusion
• Glossary
• References
• Index