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Emerging Class in Papua New Guinea
The Telling of Difference

Authors:
Deborah B. Gewertz, Amherst College, Massachusetts
Frederick K. Errington, Trinity College, Connecticut

Date Published: October 1999
availability: Available
format: Paperback
isbn: 9780521655675

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About the Authors

Class has become a feature of life in Papua New Guinea, evident in both "traditional" and "modern" settings. This book examines the emergence of class differences and its social and cultural ramifications in Wewak, capital of the East Sepik Province. It movingly conveys the injuries of class inequalities, and reveals how class has worked in similar and different ways, and how it has become possible and plausible for relatively affluent "nationals," even those living in modest urban centers, to present themselves as fundamentally superior to other Papua New Guineans.
- Written as a textbook, it looks at the subtle and complex workings of world systems and shows how they impinge on real people's lives
- A follow on to the authors' two other successful books on Papua New Guinea, written at the same level, and both widely adopted in course teaching
- Brings home the reality of class - the way that differences in worth are created, experienced, and justified
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Reviews & endorsements
"Gewertz and Errington have written a very valuable study of how a middle class is being formed among the people of Papua New Guinea under contemporary conditions of globalization." Choice
"It is refreshing to see ethnographic data that actually confront an issue in PNG that nearly all of us who work there know has occurred, but which almost no anthropologist has taken seriously. For that reason alone, this book would be most welcome, but i has many other contributions to make as well. This important book is readable and provocative. Many will find it suitable for both undergraduate and graduate courses on development, modernization, and globalization, as well as for Oceania courses. Its firm base in Chambri ehtnography gives it a grounding that will be hard to find elsewhere." Anthropoligical Quarterly
"...this is a valuable book of immediate relevance. It has important things to say about and to the people of Papua New Guinea and a message about the larger question of class. I hope it inspires vigorous discussion and additional research on this vital issue." The Contemporary Pacific, Michael French Smith, LTG Associates
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Product details
- Date Published: October 1999
- format: Paperback
- isbn: 9780521655675
- length: 192 pages
- dimensions: 228 x 153 x 14 mm
- weight: 0.318kg
- contains: 12 b/w illus. 1 map
- availability: Available
Table of Contents
List of illustrations
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction
2. The middle class, the (new) Melanesian way: the Wewak Rotary Club
3. How the grass roots became the poor: the sleights of hand in the construction of desire
4. The realization of class exclusions: golf and the boundaries of solidarity
5. The hidden injuries of class: desiring the unattainable
6. The problem(s) of the poor: law, order and tinned mackerel and water buffalo
7. Class and the definition of reasonability: the case of the 'compo girl'
Conclusion: on dark nights of the soul
Notes
References
Index.
Look Inside
Authors
Deborah B. Gewertz, Amherst College, Massachusetts
Frederick K. Errington, Trinity College, Connecticut