[Anthropgrad] Pre-Field Seminar by Fraser Macdonald on FRIDAY, 7 Nov 08

[Sin Wen Lau]

Anthropology Friday Seminar Series, Semester 2, 2008
Coombs Seminar Room C
Friday, 7 November 2008, 3pm

'The Indigenization of Christianity in PNG: A Performance Approach'
Pre-Field Seminar by Fraser MacDonald, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of 
Anthropology, RSPAS

In this seminar I introduce my proposed research into the indigenization 
of Christianity as this has occurred among Oksapmin speakers living in 
the Tekin Valley, West Sepik (Sandaun) Province, Papua New Guinea. I 
take as my departure point a particular tension that has emerged in the 
anthropological literature on Christianity in the general region where I 
will undertake my fieldwork. On the one hand, Robbins (2001) has argued 
that Urapmin have ‘adopted’ Christianity into their society without in 
any way mixing it with their pre-existing cosmology or morality. On the 
other hand, Brutti (1997) has argued that Oksapmin inhabiting a 
neighbouring valley to Tekin have ‘superpositioned’ Christianity onto 
their pre-existing cosmology, leaving that latter system existing 
vibrantly beneath a thin veneer of imported terminology and references. 
I do not contend that either of the respective authors have ‘got it 
wrong,’ but the fact that such divergent accounts of the indigenization 
of Christianity have emerged among two socially and geographically 
closely related groups suggests that, at most, the process has not yet 
been fully understood or, at least, that it requires further interrogation.

I seek to advance existing anthropological understanding of Christianity 
as it has occurred in this mountainous locale by employing a theoretical 
framework based on performance. Generally speaking, such approaches seek 
to embellish interpretive models that stress the discursive and 
representative dimensions of social action by underscoring the 
non-discursive, practically expressive aspects of what people do. A 
basic premise is that human beings construct social realities not only 
through the cognitive material they logically transact but also through 
how that material is stylistically constituted in the world. 
Furthermore, the union of message and medium (or text and enactment) in 
performance does not only logically inform participants in such events, 
but may also fire their emotions, excite their motivations, or induce 
various bodily sensations, all of which are culturally organized. By 
drawing attention to the aesthetic, experiential, interactive, 
dimensions of Oksapmin Christian performance I hope to better understand 
how such events are ‘brought off’ and, consequently, to provide a 
literally more ‘fleshed out’ account of how Oksapmin position themselves 
in relation to Christianity and how they take Christianity to position 
them in the world.
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Lau Sin Wen
Department of Anthropology
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies
The Australian National University
Canberra ACT0200
Australia

Telephone : +61-2-6125-3271
Fax	 : +61-2-6125-4896
Email	 : sinwen.lau at anu.edu.au
Website	 : http://rspas.anu.edu.au/anthropology
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