Book review of "Society of Others: Kinship and Mourning in a West Papuan Place" by R. Stasch, University of California Press, 2009.

Abstract

[Extract] Stasch introduces this book as an analysis of the ways 'in which Korowai people of West Papua, Indonesia, make qualities of otherness the central focus of their social relations' (1). In detailing the implications of this point, the book emerges as a fine contribution to Melanesian anthropology and proposes a new of way of thinking about social relationships. His emphasis on 'otherness-focused social relating' is explicitly presented as 'an effort to complicate the idea of relational personhood in Melanesianist anthropology' (184), an attempt to transform conventional understanding that positive social relationships, at their kernel, involve pure identity. Instead, he wants us to understand a community where otherness and identity are always co-present and interdependent. Through some excellent, sometimes astounding, ethnography he succeeds in developing these points into a subtle and thoughtful portrait of Korowai sociality.