The Fame of Gawa

This new edition of the critically acclaimed "The Fame of Gawa" - originally published in 1986 - makes available for the first time this important work in paperback. "The Fame of Gawa" is concerned with fundamental practices of value creation on Gawa, a small island off the southeast coast of mainland Papua New Guinea, the inhabitants of which participate in the long-distance kula shell exchange ring. Integrating various aspects of the study of society and culture - including the sociocultural construction of space and time, self-other relations and the body, and moral and political problems of hierarchy and equality - Nancy D. Munn shows that it is through achieving fame in the wider inter-island world that the Gawan community asserts its own internal viablity. Nancy D. Munn is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago.