Valleys of Historicity and Ways of Power among the Fuyuge

Attention to history is widely seen as a necessary corrective to the synchronic perspective of ethnography, especially as this has come to inform research in Melanesia. In fact, anthropologists turn to the study of history not only to understand ‘change’ and ‘the past’ but to delineate the ‘history’ of the people studied. However, history as a concept and discipline has a unique place in western knowledge conventions, an outcome of the distinctive ways of gauging and relating past, present and future. Historical analysis can augment ethnography but not necessarily portray the history of the people concerned, as they may have no history, as such. The article suggests that historicity is a more appropriate notion with which to register the significant ways in which the social past is entangled in what people are and do and in their future potentialities. This argument is made with reference to the Fuyuge people of highland Papua and their involvement in engineered trail and road building during the colonial and post‐colonial period and their simultaneous interest in the performance of their gab ritual. These events exemplify different kinds of power and associated historicity. Through scrutiny of each it is shown that the form of Fuyuge (Melanesian) historicity parallels that of their sociality and its distinct temporality. The events that actors perform produce not so much history, as the recurrent evocation of past actions and the foreshadowing of future ones

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Argument (complex analysis) · Colonialism · Epistemology · Ethnography · Evocation · Historicity (philosophy) · Millenarianism · Parallels · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Scrutiny · Sociality · Sociology · Temporality · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · History · Island Studies and Pacific Affairs · Law · Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies · Philosophy

• Enactive Narrativities

  Open Access•Gabriel Torrealba Alfonzo, Gabriel Torrealba•1700-tal: Nordic Journal for…•2025

  Incluir item

• Perfect present, perfect gift

  Open Access•Brien Brothman•Archives and Museum Informatics•2010

  Incluir item

• Diverging and merging regimes of historicity along the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea

  Open Access•C Falck•History and Anthropology•2026

  Incluir item

• Figures of history

  Open Access•Courtney Handman•Hau Journal of Ethnographic Theory•2016

  Incluir item

• Material historicity

  Open Access•Alanna Cant•History and Anthropology•2025

  Incluir item

• "Reinventing "History

  M Hodges•History and Anthropology•2015

  Incluir item

• The empty place

  James F Weiner•The empty place•1991

  Incluir item

• The Past is a Foreign Country

  David Lowenthal•The Past is a Foreign Country•1999

  Incluir item

• The Sorrow of the Lonely and the Burning of the Dancers

  Open Access•Edward L Schieffelin•Sorrow of the Lonely and the…•2005

  Incluir item

• Ku Waru

  Open Access•F Merlan, A Rumsey•Ku Waru•1991

  Incluir item

• Silencing the Past

  Michel-Rolph Trouillot•Silencing the Past•2012

  Incluir item

• Time, Narrative and History

  Open Access•Susan Watkins•Contemporary Women’s Post-Apocalypt…•2020

  Incluir item

• The Yearbook of Symbolic Anthropology

  Erik Schwimmer•The Yearbook of Symbolic…•1978

  Incluir item

• The Mafulu Mountain People of British New Guinea

  William Churchill, Robert W Williamson•Bulletin of the American…•1913

  Incluir item

• Sound and Sentiment

  Steven Feld•Sound and Sentiment•2012

  Incluir item

• The Anthropology of Time

  Alfred Gell•Anthropology of Time•2021

  Incluir item

• The Gender of the GiftProblems with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia

  Marilyn Strathern•The gender of the gift•1988

  Incluir item

• Apologies to Thucydides

  William G Thalmann•The American Historical Review•2005

  Incluir item

• Fabricated World

  Janet Dixon Keller, Janet Keller et al.•Western Folklore•1987

  Incluir item

• Finding An Appropriate Beginning For A History Of The Tolai Colonial Past

  Klaus Neumann•Canberra Anthropology•1992

  Incluir item

• Ku Waru

  Eric Schwimmer, Francesca Merlan et al.•Pacific Affairs•1992

  Incluir item

• Clio in Oceania

  David W Noble, Aletta Biersack•Ethnohistory•1993

  Incluir item

• Asiwinarong

  Roy Wagner•Asiwinarong•1986

  Incluir item

• Culture

  Adam Kuper•Culture•1999

  Incluir item

• Making up People in Papua

  Open Access•Eric Hirsch•Journal of the Royal Anthropologica…•2001

  Incluir item

• Introduction

  Eric Hirsch, Charles William Stewart et al.•History and Anthropology•2005

  Incluir item