Gender in Amazonia and Melanesia: An Exploration of the Comparative Method

This is a collection of 14 articles, the first of which is [Thomas A. Gregor]'s and [Donald Tuzin]'s "theoretical orientation." Even from the Acknowledgments, it is clear that Gregor and Tuzin are proud, and justifiably so, to have produced "...the first book to systematically compare the cultures of [Melanesia] and Amazonia, and to consider the remarkable parallels and illuminating differences that exist between them" (p. ix). Taking the two regions as one (the imaginary "Melazonia," as Hugh-Jones dubs it) is a big task, and one that I suspect many anthropologists have wondered about, but found too daunting to take further than imagining what might explain those parallels and differences. So I congratulate the editors on putting together this project. They are also to be commended, as are the other authors, for doing what is all too seldom done in relatively large collections of articles: each author specifically engages other contributors' articles; in addition, each article is introduced by a paragraph which briefly summarizes the focus of the article and recommends other articles that could fruitfully be read in relation to it. Many of the articles (including Bonnemère, Hill and Biersack) focus on "male initiations" as "making men" (Papua New Guinea case studies) as opposed to "renewing the cosmos" (Amazonian examples). This difference is then related in interesting ways to differing ideas of the origins of the cosmos and of living species (Bonnemère, 41). Hill compares "marked" and "unmarked cults" across the two regions, and looks also at the parallels in childbirth rites. Biersack (rather unfairly) criticizes Turner and Van Gennep for not seeing the reproductive politics in male-focussed rituals. In her analysis of a ritual practiced by the Paiela of the Papua New Guinea Highlands in order to grow boys' hair and bodies,she makes an original point that the goal is to make them into not men, but husbands. One might reasonably ask, though, whether it is indeed making them into potential fathers instead, and whether that is an important distinction to draw.