Mararoko describes the traditional and changing life of the South Kewa people of Papua New Guinea. Through discussion of story-telling, ritual performance and the power of pigs, the author suggests that an idiom of exchange integrates the various domains of Kewa cultural experience and provides a means of change. The work is accompanied by a collection of stories, historical accounts and songs.
"The book is a trap. The author introduces us to the technologically simple lives of the people of Mararoko - people gardening and hunting, keeping pigs and cassowaries. Then suddenly we realize that the social and religious worlds of Mararoko are anything but simple. We encounter a people who experience their identity as an active part of the cosmos, interacting with and influencing the whole environment. I recommend this book to anyone who is concerned with the understanding of human existence. The people of Mararoko help us to see ourselves as participants, not lords, of creation." (Ennio Mantovani, Director, The Melanesian Institute, Papua New Guinea)
"The injection of a sense of everyday happenings and problems lends the book a charm, and the author obviously has a good eye for particular 'human situations' of interest, which can in turn be related back to the collection of narratives. As a missionary anthropologist, MacDonald is highly alert to problems of choice and competing pressures among the Erave, and she conveys a better sense of changing Melanesia than many anthropologists (who sometimes do not want to see that these changes are taking place, because they disturb a pre-envisioned 'traditional purity')." (G.W. Trompf, Anthropos)
"MacDonald has done excellent work..." (K. Franklin, Canberra Anthropology)
"...this book makes a valuable addition to the ethnographic literature on Southern Highland societies." (Geoffrey M. White, The Journal of Pacific History)
"The injection of a sense of everyday happenings and problems lends the book a charm, and the author obviously has a good eye for particular 'human situations' of interest, which can in turn be related back to the collection of narratives. As a missionary anthropologist, MacDonald is highly alert to problems of choice and competing pressures among the Erave, and she conveys a better sense of changing Melanesia than many anthropologists (who sometimes do not want to see that these changes are taking place, because they disturb a pre-envisioned 'traditional purity')." (G.W. Trompf, Anthropos)
"MacDonald has done excellent work..." (K. Franklin, Canberra Anthropology)
"...this book makes a valuable addition to the ethnographic literature on Southern Highland societies." (Geoffrey M. White, The Journal of Pacific History)