Pigs for the Ancestors: Ritual in the Ecology of a New Guinea People, Second Edition

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Waveland Press, Feb 7, 2000 - Social Science - 501 pages

This influential work is the most important and widely cited book ever published in ecological anthropology. It is a classic case study of human ecology in a tribal society, the role of culture (especially ritual) in local and regional resource management, negative feedback, and the application of systems theory to an anthropological population. It is considered a major work of theory, yet it is also empirically grounded in Rappaports meticulous collection of quantitative and qualitative data on such material matters as diet and energy expenditure, as well as such mental-cognitive-ideational domains as myth and folk taxonomies. Rappaports tour de force is a recognized classic because it contributes in so many ways to anthropological theory, ethnographic methodology, ecological anthropology, and the anthropology of religion. This enlarged edition offers a carefully reasoned, empirically focused reassessment of Rappaports original study in the context of ongoing theoretical and methodological problems. 

 

Contents

Chapter 1 Ritual Ecology and Systems
1
Chapter 2 The Tsembaga
8
Chapter 3 Relations with the Immediate Environment
32
Chapter 4 Relations with Other Local Populations
99
Photos
140
Chapter 5 The Ritual Cycle
153
Chapter 6 Ritual and the Regulation of Ecological Systems
224
Appendix 1 Rainfall
243
Appendix 5 Energy Expenditure in Gardening
256
Appendix 6 Secondary Growth
263
Appendix 7 Commonly Propagated Plants
270
Appendix 8 Nondomesticated Resources
271
Appendix 9 Diet
278
Appendix 10 Carrying Capacity
285
Epilogue 1984
299
Bibliography
481

Appendix 2 Soils
244
Appendix 3 Floristic Composition of Primary Forest
247
Appendix 4 Estimating Yields per Unit Area
252

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