BOOKS

Bell, Dianne: Daughters of the Dreaming.

1993. Second Edition. St. Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin. ISBN 1-86373-441-4.

This well-known study of Aboriginal women from Central Australia was first published in 1983. The book 'raised issues about gender relations, the writing of ethnography and feminist research that are still being vigorously debated. In this second edition, Bell revisits her work of the seventies from her standpoint in the nineties. In a thought-provoking epilogue she explores key anthropological questions posed by her analysis of her first fieldwork from her current standpoint as a professor a decade on.' The second edition contains a new foreword, as well as the new epilogue.

Borsboom, Ad and Anton Ploeg: Stille Zuidzee.

1992. Amsterdam: Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen/'s- Gravenhage: Novib/Brussel: NCOS. ISBN 90-6832-315-6.

General overview of the South Pacific Region. Deals with European visions of the Pacific, the cultural diversity of the region, colonisation, economics and politics, and cultural identities.

Craig, Robert D.: Historical Dictionary of Polynesia.

1993. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press. ISBN 0-8108-2706-9.

The contents of this historical guide to the Polynesian island states include Polynesian ethnic and cultural interrelationships, brief histories of the various island states with a strong emphasis on the post-contact era, and detailed information on politically significant events, persons and organisations in alphabetical order. An extensive bibliography and appendixes with additional information complete the book.

Dempsey, Ken: A Man's Town: Inequality between Women and Men in Rural Australia.

1993. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-554997- X

This book 'is the first full-length study to offer a comprehensive account of gender inequality in all major areas of life in rural Australia. It is based on fieldwork spanning seventeen years in a rural community and wrestles with issues such as: why are men able to exclude, subordinate and exploit women? and how, despite the resentment and resistance of some women, do men preserve their advantage in all spheres of daily life?'

Fox, James (ed.): Inside Austronesian Houses: Perspectives on Domestic Designs for Living.

1993. Canberra: Research School of Pacific Studies' Comparative Austronesian Project (The Department of Anthropology, Research School of Pacific Studies, The Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia).

'The eight papers in this volume examine the spatial organization of a variety of Austronesian houses and relate the domestic design of the houses to the social and ritual practices of the groups who reside within them. The houses considered in this volume range from longhouses in Borneo to the meeting-houses of the Maori of New Zealand and from the magnificient houses of the Minangkabau of Sumatra to the simpler dwellings of the population of Goodenough Island in Papua New Guinea.'

Gell, Alfred: Wrapping in Images: Tattooing in Polynesia.

1993. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-827869-1.

'In traditional Polynesian societies, tattooing played a key role in the social construction of the person. This study is the first to provide a comparative analysis of tattooing in its original setting, based on a comprehensive survey of the documentary sources, both written and visual.'

Goldman, Laurence: The Culture of Coincidence: Accident and Absolute Liability in Huli.

1993. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-827873-X.

'This study provides the first full-length account of "accident" in a non-western society. Although the topic has received little sustained attention in anthropology, the author shows how important it is to our understanding of liability, actions and actors' intentions. Using data gleaned from the Huli in Papua New Guinea, Goldman displays the similarities in thinking about accident across cultures'.

Keen, Ian: Knowledge and Secrecy in an Aboriginal Religion: Yolngu of North-East Arnhem Land.

Forthcoming (February 1994). Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-827900.

'Yolngu religious practice is constituted in indeterminancy and ambiguity: people cooperate in enacting common religious forms while interpreting those forms differently. In this book Ian Keen draws on recent post-structuralist social theory to discuss this heterogeneity of culture and practice. He examines the framing of religious forms and the control of the dissemination of knowledge, and concludes by discussing the effect of post-colonial social and religious changes on Yolngu power relations.'

Lüthi, Bernard (ed.): Aratjara: Art of the First Australians

1993 Köln: DuMont Buchverlag. ISBN 3-926154-17-9.

Richly illustrated book accompanying the touring exhibition with the same title (Düsseldorf, London, Humblebeak and Melbourne, 1993-1994). Catalogue and contributions by a great many authors working in the field of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art.

Mowaljarlai, David & Jutta Malnic: Yorro Yorro: Everything Standing Up Alive.

1993. Broome: Magabala Books. (Available in Germany from Renate Schenk Verlag, Diekampstrasse 24, 44787 Bochum, Germany. Tel: 0234-683006.)

A book by the Aboriginal author David Mowaljarlai in cooperation with Sydney photographer Jutta Malnic on Aboriginal dreaming stories, places and narratives of the Kimberley (northwestern Australia), and an account of Mowaljarlai's life story. With a foreword by Andreas Lommel.

Smidt, Dirk (ed.): Asmat Art: Woodcarvings of Southwest New Guinea.

1993. Leiden: Periplus Editions & The Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde, in association with C. Zwartenkot, Amsterdam. ISBN 90-5450-001-8 (Benelux edition).; ISBN 0-945971-59-1 (International edition).

'Asmat Art features the world-renowned woodcarvings of the Asmat, former headhunters who live in the tidal swamps of southern Irian Jaya, the western half of the island of New Guinea. Working with stone axes, bone, bits of shell, and an occasional iron nail that washed ashore from passing ships, early carvers fashioned wood into stunning masterpieces: war shields, some taller than a man; figure sculptures; and ceremonial carvings, most famously the towering bisj poles. Assembled in the book are the fines examples of Asmat woodcarving art, drawn from the extensive collection of the Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde (National Museum of Ethnography) in Leiden and other fine museums. Editor Dirk Smidt, Curator of the National Museum's Oceanic section, has gathered distinguished experts on Asmat art and culture to describe the physical and spiritual world of the Asmat, to explain the motifs used by master carvers, and to present an historical overview of European collections of Asmat art.'

Swain, Tony: A Place for Strangers: Towards a History of Australian Aboriginal Being.

1993. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521- 44691-0 (pb)/0-521-43005-4 (hb).

'A Place for Strangers investigates Aboriginal myth, ritual, cosmology, and philosophy, and also examines social organisation, subsistence patterns and cultural change. The author separates out a common core of religious belief which reflects a precontact spirituality of Australian Aborigines more concerned with place than any philosophy of time or origins. It is against this standard that the changes documented in subsequent chapters are measured. The book calls for a radical reinterpretation of all ethnographic data on Aboriginal peoples so that we place our ethnographic evidence within the context of recent historical processes.'

Slaats, H. and K. Portier: Traditional Decision-making and Law: Institutions and Processes in an Indonesian Context.

1992. Yogyakarta: Gadjah Mada University Press. ISBN 979- 420-246-0.

The system of national law in Indonesia is still based on Western, particularly Dutch, Law. In some domains, such as Agrarian Law and Marriage Law, the regulations of Dutch colonial origin have been replaced by new Indonesian Law. National laws explicitly refer to traditional or adat law in only a few instances. Yet adat law is an important normative factor in daily life of the Indonesian and it is often invoked in court cases.

In several respects adat law is fundamentally different from western law: it is not a dogmatic system of pre-defined substantive rules to be applied in similar cases.

Most of the - locally diversified - forms of traditional law have an institutionalised process of formal deliberation and decision-making by consensus - in and without dispute - generally referred to as musyawarah, in which rules of behaviour are created, re-established, modified, and replaced for the concrete case at hand. These decision- making processes are not based solely on the evaluation of behaviour against objective 'legal' standards, but also on subjective considerations of pragmatic solutions, social relationships and 'group-political' interests. That is one of the reasons why a decision in one case does not necessarily also apply to other 'similar' cases. The justification of decisions lies in the proper devolution of the process rather than in the just application of rules. This notion is important for a proper understanding of the 'traditional' process of law.

This book presents a descriptive analysis of the structural and dynamic properties of this process of formal decision- making and its role and significance in one of Indonesia's ethnic societies, the Karo Batak society of North Sumatra, both in the village and in urban situations. The transcriptions of two cases of decision-making are added as real-life examples of such processes. As unabridged documentation of such discussions is rare, these examples have added historical value.

The book can be obtained from: Gadjah Mada University Press, PO Box 14 (Bulaksumur), Yogyakarta 55281, Indonesia. Fax: 274-61037.

Slaats, H. (ed.): Liber Amicorum Mohamad Koesnoe.

1993. Surabaya: Airlangga University Press.

This book contains the contributions of 18 scholars in the fields of anthropology and (Indonesian adat) law, written in honour of prof. Moh. Koesnoe, emeritus professor of Airlangga University Surabaya (Indonesia), on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of his international scientific activities. Prof. Koesnoe is one of the few Indonesian legal scholars who has developed original thought on fundamental questions with regard to the essentials of Indonesian law. The character of the contributions varies from personal memories to scientific essays. They are written in Dutch, English and Indonesian.

The book can be obtained from:

H. Slaats, PB 9049, 6500 KK Nijmegen, The Netherlands; Fax: 80-616145, or from:

Siti Soendari, Jl. Sri Ikana 57, Surabaya 60286, Indonesia.

Price: Hfl. 20,-- or US$ 11.- (postage not included).

Van der Grijp, Paul: Islanders of the South: Production, Kinship and Ideology in the Polynesian Kingdom of Tonga

1993. Leiden: KITLV Press. (Verhandelingen Series 154). ISBN 90-6718-058-0.

'Islanders of the South is an ethnography of the kingdom of Tonga in the South Pacific. This is the first book which examines the interplay of Polynesian and Western ideas within contemporary social and economic practices.

The book provides, first, an account of contemporary Tongan society and the main means of subsistence: agriculture, fishing, and manufacturing. An analysis of the kinship system, with its economic, political and ideological dimensions, is intertwined with a discussion of Tongan attitudes on life and death, marriage and divorce, social rights and obligations, migration and remittances. Later chapters deal with the crucial questions of land ownership and the circulation of gifts. The aim is to investigate how Tongans live together and how they experience their relationship to nature and to one another. A large number of genealogies, biographies and case studies help convey this aspect.

Effects on Tonga of global developments - predominantly capitalist in nature - are expressed in the commercialization of the means of subsistence. Such changes accompanied by technological development and rising living standards (by Western criteria) are often regarded as progress. The author raises doubts about this ideology of progress by referring to aspects of nature and culture in Tonga which are disappearing or are in danger of doing so. Up to now Tongans have been able to preserve the circulation of gifts and economic self-sufficiency to a large extent.'