Articles with the keyword bodily transformation
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Food and Bodily Fabrication: An alimentary approach to personhood in Papua New Guinea
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society Volume 34(1) 2009: 42-61
Abstract
Abstract
This paper exposes the integral role of food within the production of social
configurations and the persons who constitute them in Papua New Guinea
(PNG). The critical appraisal of current perspectives on food in PNG reveals the
necessity of providing a theoretical framework that allows its exchange and
consumption to be analysed simultaneously. In order to achieve this, a
reconceptualisation of the body as fabricated is undertaken, which in turn, evokes
recent attempts to translate ‘ontological perspectivism’ into Melanesia. Drawing
upon this theoretical manoeuvre, an ontologically significant relationship is
elucidated between the ingestion of food, bodily transformation, and the
production of different ‘types’ or ‘kinds’ of person in PNG. The reanalysis of
data from existing ethnography reveals how persons throughout this region
manipulate both external and internal relations through the exchange and
consumption of food in order to activate crucial differentiations between persons.
These arguments suggest that food should be elevated as a critical focus in
anthropological studies of social processes in PNG, specifically those concerned
with the activation of personhood.Keywords bodily transformation, food, ontological perspectivism, personhood, social processes