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- Title
On Making Fathers in Lesu: The Historical Anthropology of a New Ireland Society.
- Authors
Aijmer, Göran
- Abstract
This article examines the initiation of boys in Lesu, New Ireland, in 1929-30. It is argued that these rituals not only transformed the initiands but also their fathers and thereby created counterpoint notions of social continuity in an openly 'matrilineal' society. Discursive and iconic symbolism identified and made manifest an alternative male cultural modality, not generally accessible to women. The neophytes' socially ascribed fathers, not necessarily their actual genitors, were in the world of female presuppositions ritually very marginal to their discursively defined children, but circumcision established a new sort of iconic fatherhood. Male social continuity involved the construction of flows in two directions, the future being dependent on the establishment of a past.
- Subjects
NEW Ireland Island (Papua New Guinea); PAPUA New Guinea; INITIATION rites; RITUAL; FATHERHOOD
- Publication
Oceania, 2007, Vol 77, Issue 2, p232
- ISSN
0029-8077
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1002/j.1834-4461.2007.tb00014.x