The Min peoples of Papua New Guinea are renowned for their secret male initiation rituals and have proven to be one of the most enigmatic cultures in anthropological experience. This study analyses the 'Min problem', and argues that the root of this long-standing interpretative impasse has been in Anthropology's view of secrecy and knowledge.Because Barth's pioneering work in this small corner of Melanesia still exerts an important influence on the discipline's contemporary view of knowledge, the implications of this critique go far beyond a little known problem and raise fundamental questions about the nature of anthropological knowledge itself.In Bolivip, knowledge-making is perceived as exchanging skin and bodily resources with others, and is withheld until a person is capable of bearing it. The argument uses these understandings to consider our own assumptions, and works through alternating chapters. An imagistic ethnography of Bolivip with vivid descriptions of life in the rainforest, supported by high quality illustrations, describes how arboreal and horticultural metaphors motivate the growth of persons and plants. These chapters alternate with ethnographies of anthropological knowledge proposing new readings of Melanesianist texts by Mead, Bateson and Fortune; Weiner and Strathern; and Barth.Having suggested that the root of the Min problem also underpins a wider impasse in anthropological knowledge, the study concludes with a new analytical figure, 'the textual person', that suggests a more promising future for anthropological knowledge.

Anthropological Knowledge, Secrecy and Bolivip, Papua New Guinea: Exchanging Skin (British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship Monographs)

Literature & Fiction

Crook, Tony

Contemporary

British Academy

Winner of the Royal Town Planning Institute award for research excellence This critical examination of the development and implementation of planning gain is timely given recent changes to the economic and policy environment. The book looks both at the British context as well as experience in other developed economies and takes stock of how the policy has evolved. It examines the rationale for planning gain, how it has delivered substantial funds for infrastructure and affordable housing and, in the light of this, how it might continue to play a role in the funding of these. It also draws on overseas experience, for example on impact fees and public sector land assembly. It looks at lessons from the past for future policy, both for Britain and for countries overseas. Mechanisms to tap development value are also a global phenomenon in developed market economies - whether through formal taxation or negotiated contributions. As fiscal austerity becomes an increasingly challenging issue, ‘planning gain’ has grown in importance as a potential source of funding for infrastructure and new affordable housing, with many countries keen to examine, learn from, and adapt the experience of others. <ul>
<li>a critical commentary of planning gain as a policy</li> <li>timely post credit crunch analysis</li> <li>addresses recent planning policy changes</li> </ul>

Planning Gain: Providing Infrastructure and Affordable Housing (Real Estate Issues)

Business & Money

Whitehead, Christine

Henneberry, John

Real Estate

Wiley/Blackwell

Low-lying Pacific island nations are experiencing the frontline of sea-level rises and climate change and are responding creatively and making-sense in their own vernacular terms. Pacific Climate Cultures aims to bring Oceanic philosophies to the frontline of social science theorization. It explores the home-grown ways that 'climate change' becomes absorbed into the combined effects of globalization and into a living nexus of relations amongst human and non-humans, spirits and elements. Contributors to this edited volume explore diverse examples of living climate change-from floods and cyclones, through song and navigation, to new forms of art, community initiatives and cultural appropriations-and demonstrate their international relevance in understanding climate change. A Prelude by His Highness Tui Atua Efi and Afterword by Anne Salmond frame an Introduction by Tony Crook &amp; Peter Rudiak-Gould and nine chapters by contributors including John Connell, Elfriede Hermann &amp; Wolfgang Kempf and Cecilie Rubow. Endorsement from Professor Margaret Jolly, Australian National University: This exciting volume offers innovative insights on climate cultures across Oceania. It critically interrogates Western environmental sciences which fail to fully appreciate Oceanic knowledges and practices. It reveals how climate science can be both 'a weapon of the weak' and 'an act of symbolic violence of the powerful'. A compelling series of studies in the Cook islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Papua New Guinea and Samoa suggest not diverse cultural constructions of 'natural facts' but processes of knowledge exchange and at best a respectful reciprocity in confronting present challenges and disturbing future scenarios. 'Home-grown' Pacific discourses and ways of living emphasise the interconnections of all life on earth and in our cosmos; they do not differentiate between the natural and the moral, between environmental and cultural transformations. These studies evoke the creative agency of Oceanic peoples, too often seen as on the vanguard of victimhood in global representations of climate change, and offer distinctive visions for all humanity in these troubling times.

Pacific Climate Cultures

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

De Gruyter Open Poland

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Books by Crook, Tony