ENGLISH

The Abandoned Narcotic: Kava and Cultural Instability in Melanesia

By Ron Brunton

Book information

Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Year
2007
ISBN
0521040051, 9780521040051, 0521373751, 9780521373753, 9780511557958
LCC
DU760 .B84 1989
Language
english
Format
DJVU
Filesize
2 MB (1689546 bytes)
Series
Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology 69
Pages
228\227
Topic
Education
Time added
2011-06-04 13:46:07

Description

Ron Brunton revives a problem posed by the great anthropologist W. H. R. Rivers in History of Melanesian Society (1914): how to explain the strange geographical distribution of kava, a narcotic drink once widely consumed by south-west Pacific islanders. Rivers believed that it was abandoned by many people even before European contact in favour of another drug, betel, drawing his speculations from the ideas of the diffusionist school of anthropology. However, Dr Brunton disagrees. Taking the varying fortunes of kava on the island of Tanna, Vanauta, as his starting point, he suggests that kava's abandonment can best be explained in terms of its association with unstable religious cults, and not because of the adoption of betel. The problem of kava is therefore part of a broader problem of why many traditional Melanesian societies were characteristically highly unstable, and Dr Brunton sees this instability as both an outcome and a cause of weak institutions of authority and social coordination.

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