Payback
Payback
Near to the heart of the human predicament are impulses to avenge - what most of us will recognize to be negative, counterproductive reactions against others who pose a threat. By contrast, nothing re-establishes our faith in humanity more than extraordinary acts of concession, such as peace-making, generosity and sacrifice. In this study Garry Trompf shows how various aspects of 'payback', both negative and positive, provide the best indices to an understanding of Melanesian views of life. The book explores the reasons why people 'pay back' and opens up a whole dimension in the cross-cultural study of human consciousness. The author conducts his readers through the most complex anthropological pageant on earth, illustrating his arguments from western New Guinea to Fiji.
- The first monograph on religion and 'the logic of retribution' ever written
- Opens up a whole new dimension in the cross-cultural study of human consciousness
Product details
May 2008Paperback
9780521062770
568 pages
234 × 155 × 28 mm
0.8kg
23 b/w illus. 6 tables
Available
Table of Contents
- Illustrations and tables
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Preliminaries: the theory of retributive logic
- Part I. 'Tradition':
- 1. Revenge
- 2. Reciprocity
- 3. Integrating and explaining significant events
- Part II. 'Cargo Cultism':
- 4. Reprisal
- 5. Redemption
- 6. Wishing and explaining the extraordinary
- Part III. 'Modernization':
- 7. Recrimination - in 'modern' guises
- 8. Making money and modernizing reciprocities
- 9. Money, morals, meaning: old logics, new retributions?
- Conclusions and recommendations: Bibliography
- Index of Melanesian cultures
- General index.
