The research programme Contemporary Ethnography presents in the academic hour seminar series:

James F. Weiner (Australian National University): The Wives of Monmaneki: Splitting and Loss in Amazonia and New Guinea Myth

The seminar takes place Monday 26 November 2012 at 12.30-2.00 pm, Stakladen, Mogens Zieler Stuen.

All staff and students are welcome.

Abstract:

Just as Amazonian myth has been inextricably linked with the structural analysis of myth of Claude Levi-Strauss, so has Papua New Guinea myth come to be dominated by the technique of obviational analysis as employed by Roy Wagner (1978). In this combination of seminar and workshop, I pose the questions: Did these two techniques grow directly out of the structural features of the culture areas in question? Do the techniques themselves reveal something foundational about the way that symbolic articulation and narrative structure work in these two areas? Are the two techniques themselves related in any way, or do they oppose and possibly subvert each other? I attempt to apply Wagner's obviational model to the Tukuna myth " The Wives of Monmaneki" (Mythologiques v. 3), attempt to use his this analysis to adress the above questions, and them examine a Foi myth (Papua New Guinea) in order to assess the relation between the differences in myth content and the differences in analytical techniques.