Payback The Logic of Retribution in Melanesian Religions [Hardcover]

In this study Garry Trompf shows how various aspects of 'payback', both negative and positive, provide the best indices to an understanding of Melanesian views of life.In this study Garry Trompf shows how various aspects of 'payback', both negative and positive, provide the best indices to an understanding of Melanesian views of life. The book explores the reasons why people 'pay back' and opens up a whole dimension in the cross-cultural study of human consciousness.In this study Garry Trompf shows how various aspects of 'payback', both negative and positive, provide the best indices to an understanding of Melanesian views of life. The book explores the reasons why people 'pay back' and opens up a whole dimension in the cross-cultural study of human consciousness.In this ambitious study, the first monograph on religion and the logic of retribution, Professor Trompf shows how various aspects of payback, both negative and positive, provide the best indices to an understanding of Melanesian views of life. The book explores the reasons why people pay back and opens up a whole new dimension in the cross-cultural study of human consciousness. The author conducts his readers through the most complex anthropological pageant on earth, illustrating his arguments from western New Guinea to Fiji.Illustrations and tables; Preface; Abbreviations; Preliminaries: the theory of retributive logic; Part I. 'Tradition': 1. Revenge; 2. Reciprocity; 3. Integrating and explaining significant events; Part II. 'Cargo Cultism': 4. Reprisal; 5. Redemption; 6. Wishing and explaining the extraordinary; Part III. 'Modernization': 7. Recrimination - in 'modern' guises; 8. Making money and modernizing reciprocities; 9. Money, morals, meaning: old logics, new retributions?; Conclusions and recommendations: Bibliography; Index of Melanesian cultures; General index. In this fascinating book, Trompf brings to fruition fifteen years of unstinting research on religion in the southwest Pacific regilS.