Mortuary Dialogues

David Lipset is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota.Eric K. Silverman is Professor of Anthropology in the American Studies and Psychology/Human Development Departments at Wheelock College.

• List of Figures and TablesForewordShirley LindenbaumAcknowledgementsMapIntroduction: Mortuary Ritual, Modern Social Theory and the Historical Moment in Pacific ModernityEric K. Silverman and David LipsetPART I: TENACIOUS VOICESChapter 1. Fearing the Dead: The Mortuary Rites of Marshall Islanders' amid the Tragedy of Pacific ModernityLaurence M. CarucciChapter 2. Into the World of Sorrow: Women and the Work of Death in Maori Mortuary RitesChe Wilson and Karen SinclairChapter 3. Death and Experience in Rawa Mortuary Rites, Papua New GuineaDoug DaltonChapter 4. The Knotted Person: Death, the Bad Breast and Melanesian Modernity among the Murik, Papua New GuineaDavid LipsetChapter 5. Mortuary Ritual and Mining Riches in Island MelanesiaNicholas A. Bainton and Martha MacintyrePART II: EQUIVOCAL VOICESChapter 6. Finishing Kapui's Name: Birth, Death and the Reproduction of Manam Society, Papua New GuineaNancy C. LutkehausChapter 7. Transformations of Male Initiation and Mortuary Rites among the Kayan of Papua New GuineaAlexis T. von PoserChapter 8. Mortuary Failures: Traditional Uncertainties and Modern Families in the Sepik River, Papua New GuineaEric K. SilvermanChapter 9. Everything Will Come Up Like TV, Everything Will Be Revealed: Death in an Age of Uncertainty in the Purari Delta, Papua New GuineaJoshua BellAfterword: Mortuary Dialogues in Pacific Modernities and AnthropologyDavid Lipset, Eric K. Silverman and Eric VenbruxIndex

"This book is notable for its wealth of ethnographic data on mortuary practices in very different parts of a changing Pacific, as well as for the critique running through it that reminds us that Hertz's model is an idealization-both emic and etic-from which the actual practice departs into varying degrees of ambivalence." Roger Lohmann, Trent University