@phdthesis{104559,
  author          = {Winduo, Steven Edmund},
  pages           = {257},
  school          = {University of Minnesota},
  title           = {Knocking On Ancestors' Door: Discourse Formation in Healing Ritual Utterances and Narratives of Nagum Boikens in Papua New Guinea},
  year            = {1998},
  abstract        = {An understanding of the impact of modernity on traditional medicinal practices of the Nagum Boikens, a Melanesian ethnic group living in Papua New Guinea involves two problematics. The first problematic is to understand how structures of authority are transformed from their traditional performative conditions with the influence of modernity. The second problematic is to preserve or even reclaim traditional healing practices before they disappear through a process of reconceptualisation. By appropriating powerful modern intellectual ideas we consider postcolonial cultural practices as knowledge systems. Traditional Nagum Boiken medical practice is a pluralistic system as will be demonstrated in this thesis. The various chapters of the thesis reflect the reconstruction of performative conditions. Magic utterances, narratives on performative conditions, and the responses of contemporary Nagum Boikens are structured as narratives about illness and healing. The importance of producing double narratives is to fulfill the demands of sacred and ordinary sets of knowledge in Nagum Boiken societies. The interdisciplinary approach in this investigation of the Nagum Boikens' cultural practices foreshadows the importance of modernity itself in relation to the maintenance of healing rituals. The internal logic which structures a cultural practice gives rise to a dialogic relationship precisely at the time when a healing ritual utterance is performed. The research presents a view into responses of Nagum Boikens' to the phenomena of illness and healing. The syncretized versions of healing and responses are by no means separated from their sites of knowledge production, but become the signifier of modernity itself, which insists on being appropriated. In a certain way, this is what forges the link between healing and the social reproduction of authority.},
  adviser         = {Escure, Genevieve},
  bestfn          = {papua\winduo_nagum1998v2_o.pdf},
  besttxt         = {ptxt2\papua\winduo_nagum1998v2_o.txt},
  cfn             = {papua\winduo_nagum1998_o.pdf},
  degree          = {PhD},
  delivered       = {papua\winduo_nagum1998_o.pdf},
  digital_formats = {PDF 9.35Mb image-only PDF},
  fn              = {papua\winduo_nagum1998.pdf, papua\winduo_nagum1998v2_o.pdf, papua\winduo_nagum1998_o.pdf},
  hhtype          = {ethnographic},
  inlg            = {English [eng]},
  isbn            = {9780599005914},
  lgcode          = {Boikin [bzf]},
  macro_area      = {Papunesia},
  source          = {DAI-A 59/08, p. 3060, Feb 1999},
  src             = {hh},
  subject         = {ANTHROPOLOGY, CULTURAL (0326); LANGUAGE, LINGUISTICS (0290); FOLKLORE (0358)},
  umi_id          = {9903376}
}