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The Cassowary's Revenge: The Life and Death of Masculinity in a New Guinea Society, by Donald Tuzin. Worlds of Desire: The Chicago Series on Sexuality, Gender, and Culture. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, I997. ISBN O-zz6-8I950-7 (cloth); ISBN o-zz6-8I95I-5 (paper), xiii + z56 pages, maps, photographs, notes, bibliography, index. Cloth, us$45.oo; paper, us$I8.gs.
This remarkable book is a study of the demise of a men's cult in Papua New Guinea during the mid-198os. Many communities in Papua New Guinea over the past century have abandoned male initiation ceremonies, willingly or otherwise. But this monograph is the only detailed firsthand examination of such an event. The location of the study is the Arapesh settlement of Ilahita, one of the largest indigenous village communities in Papua New Guinea. Tuzin first carried out research there in the early I970s, producing a highly regarded series of publications on the rich and complex male initiation system and its associated social organization, art, ritual, and architecture. The cult-called Tambaran in Pidgin-permeated all aspects of Ilahita people's lives and was central to their sense of collective identity. Through a combination of techniques of secrecy, deception, and violence, it...