FISHING CAMPS AND TOPIARY TREES: PLACE, AFFECT, AND MORAL AGENCY IN A PAPUA NEW GUINEA MODERNITY

Authors

David Lipset, University of Minnesota

Abstract

Despite being regarded as a founding father in sociology and as no less canonical in anthropology (Merton 1934; Horowitz 1982), the overall theoretical framework of Durkheim’s arguments with respect to place, affect, and agency in The Division of Labor in Society (1933) and The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1995) are too often ignored or unwittingly reinvented (Stewart 2007; Berlant 2008). I therefore want to begin this essay with a brief outline of how I understand his main points in order to lay a theoretical groundwork for my analysis of the shifting relationship of place, affect, and agency among the Murik Lakes people who live on the political and economic margins of postcolonial modernity in Papua New Guinea.

Recommended Citation

Lipset, David (2022) "FISHING CAMPS AND TOPIARY TREES: PLACE, AFFECT, AND MORAL AGENCY IN A PAPUA NEW GUINEA MODERNITY," Pacific Studies Journal: Vol. 45: No. 1, Article 3.
Available at: https://digitalcollections.byuh.edu/pacific-studies-journal/vol45/iss1/3