Style and self-making

String bag production in the Papua New Guinea Highlands

Bibliographic Data

ID2247652
AuthorsBoris Andersen (0000-0002-3478-3205, Barbara Andersen is a lecturer in Social Anthropology at Massey University, New Zealand. Her research focuses on social change, gender, and health in Melanesia., corresponding author), Barbara Andersen (Barbara Andersen is a lecturer in Social Anthropology at Massey University, New Zealand. Her research focuses on social change, gender, and health in Melanesia)
Year2015
Volume31
Issue5
Pages16-20
Publication date2015-10-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAnthropology Today (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0268-540X • E-ISSN: 1467-8322
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/1467-8322.12200
OpenAlexW1905545379
LanguageEN
References cited9

The looped netbag or bilum is one the most culturally significant of everyday objects in Papua New Guinea (PNG). Made exclusively by women, bilum are also iconic of female productive and reproductive labour. In this article, I analyze how growing social stratification is expressed through the types of bilums young women produce and wear. I argue that the choices that young women make about what kinds of designs, shapes, colours, and fashions to incorporate into their bilums can tell us a great deal about their desires, experiences, and imaginings. While previous analyses have focused on the bilum as an ambiguously gendered object expressing complex ideas about sexual difference, I argue that bilum style increasingly indexes complex ideas about geography and social location, materializing contemporary Papua New Guinean 'imaginaries' of space

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Ethnology · Geography · Linguistics · New guinea · Sexual difference · Social science · Social stratification · Sociology · Anthropology · Art, Politics, and Modernism · Crafts, Textile, and Design · Fashion and Cultural Textiles · Gender Studies · Philosophy · Psychology

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