Acting for others - Pascale Bonnemere

For the Ankave of Papua New Guinea, men, unlike women, do not reach adulthood and become fathers simply by growing up and reproducing. What fathers-and by extension, men-actually areis a result of a series ofrelational transformations,operated in and byrituals in which men and womenboth perform complementary actions in separate spaces.Acting for Othersis a tour de force in Melanesian ethnography, gender studies, and theories of ritual. Based on years of fieldwork conducted by the authorand her husband and co-ethnographer, this book's "double view" of the Ankave ritual cycle-from women in the village and from the men in the forest-is novel, provocative, and one of the most incisive analyses of the emergence of ideas of gender in Papua New Guinea since Marilyn Strathern'sThe Gender of the Gift.
At the heart of Pascale Bonnemre's argument is the idea that it is possible for genders to act for and upon one another, and to do so almost paradoxically, by limiting action through the obeying of taboos and otherrestrictions. With this first English translation by acclaimed French translator Nora Scott, accompanied by a foreword from Marilyn Strathern,Acting for Othersbrings the Ankave ritual world to new theoretical life, challenging how we think about mutual action, mutual being, and mutual life.