Articulating change in the "last unknown"

by Frederick Karl Errington

This remarkable book explores questions of identity and value posed by people living on or near the small Pacific island of Karavar in Papua New Guinea. Focusing on how the Karavarans' long-term preoccupation with identity and worth has played out in various social contexts within this rather small place, Errington and Gewertz convey a grounded sense of how these people actually live and engage with such widely significant issues as ethnic diversity and the development of national unity. The authors present a historical and ethnographic analysis that, in its scope and mastery of detail, does justice to the complexity and significance of change in a colonial and postcolonial world.