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Evangelical Rhetoric and the Transformation of Traditional Culture in Papua New Guinea

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Edward L. Schieffelin
Edward L. Schieffelin
Affiliation:
Institute for the Study of Human Issues, Philadelphia
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Extract

One night five years after completing my first field work I had a disturbing dream. In it I returned to my original field site in the Bosavi region of Papua New Guinea to discover that the vast tropical forest with its patches of gardens and isolated longhouses had disappeared. In its place was a sprawling development with rows of tract houses, paved roads, and motels. The whole was dominated by an impressive mission complex with airstrip, schools, dormatories, and a huge church.

Type
Missionary Messages
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , January 1981 , pp. 150 - 156
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1981

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References

This paper is based on fieldwork in Papua New Guinea done in 1966–68 and in 1975–77. I gratefully acknowledge the funds provided by the National Science Foundation through the Institute for the Study of Human Issues, Philadelphia, and by the National Institutes of Health through the Research Institute for the Study of Man, New York. I would also like to thank Judith Shapiro and Bambi Schieffelin for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

1 Ortner, Sherry B., “On Key Symbols”, American Anthropologist 75, no. 5 (1973): 1338.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Schieffelin, Edward L., The Sorrow of the Lonely and the Burning of the Dancers (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1976).Google Scholar

3 This has some resemblance to the situation discussed elsewhere in this issue by Thomas O. Beidelman except that, among the Kaluli, there was no direct tie made by the mission between access to goods and conversion to Christianity.

4 This contrasts interestingly with Judith Shapiro's discussion in this issue of the Little Sisters. The Little Sisters attempted to live as much like the Indians as possible and to make Christianity relevant to the Indian way of life by example. Papuan pastors attempted to live like Europeans and used their unwitting insight into Papuan culture to vigorously undermine and alter it.