This volume, the first in a new series, examines the forces of globalization at different levels, as they manifest themselves and operate across cultural, cognitive and biographical dimensions of human life in the Pacific. While posing familiar questions, it offers new answers through the integration of cultural and psychological methods. The contributors draw on practice theory, cognitive science and the anthropology of space and place while exploring the key analytical rubrics of human agency, memory and landscape.
Jürg Wassmann is Professor for Anthropology and Head of the Institute of Ethnology, University of Heidelberg. His field area is Papua New Guinea where he has carried out fieldwork among the Iatmul and the Yupno, and Bali, Indonesia. His publications include The Song to the Flying Fox (IPNGS 1991), Historical Atlas of Ethnic and Linguistic Groups in Papua New Guinea, Volume 3 (Wepf 1994), has edited Pacific Answers to Western Hegemony: Cultural Practices of Identity Construction (Berg 1998).