Download or read book Melanesian Modernities written by Jonathan Friedman and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume on the anthropology of modern Melanesia deals with topics such as: modern forms of kinship and reciprocity; the contemporary transformations of magic and witchcraft; the articulation of kinship organization and urbanization; the assimilation of urban trappings of modernity to interclan competition; and the politics of culture in Melanesian social movements. The notion of tradition is itself problematized here, rather than taken for granted, and the text contains one of the very last published articles of the late Roger Keesing, who pioneered the study of modern social and political realities in the Pacific.