Quadripartite Structures

Despite almost a century of contact with Europeans, the Bush Mekeo people of Papua New Guinea are still essentially unknown to the anthropological world. This book is the first detailed, comprehensive study of Bush Mekeo culture and society. Using a rigorous structural approach to interpret in a consistent and systematic way the principal meanings and social practices of this South Seas way of life, Mark Mosko provides a convincing portrayal of Bush Mekeo culture and society as a unified, coherent, and logical 'whole'. The main force of the book is to explore empirically the logic by which Bush Mekeo symbols are connected. Beginning with native symbolic constructions of space and time, Professor Mosko carefully unfolds the associated beliefs and practices pertaining to the body, to the relations between the genders, to the system of social organisation, and to the dramatic and resplendent Bush Mekeo mortuary ceremonial. He reveals that each of these involves complex interconnections of numerous key symbols or metaphors that can be traced to a particular underlying quadripartite pattern, which gives both the total system its form and its various symbolic elements their consistent meanings. The final two chapters explore the broader cross-cultural and theoretical implications of these findings.Mosko, Mark S. is the author of 'Quadripartite Structures', published 1985 under ISBN 9780521264525 and ISBN 0521264529.