The book contributes to our understanding of what it is like to live in the contemporary Pacific. Doing this through the lens of mortuary rituals is both original and relevant. HAL
Methodologically, Mortuary Dialogues demonstrates the value of anthropologists revisiting their fieldwork sites. The authors share a longstanding engagement with the communities they describe. By juxtaposing personal experiences from repeated intervals of field- work with readings of historical sources, they achieve solid depth to their analyses of continuity and change in ritual responses to death. Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia
The narratives used in the studies skillfully alternate between memories of a past living, a way of life not affected by socio-political histories of the West, and the experiences grounded in new and present realities of the 21st century by focusing on the double nature of these ritualsOverall the book is detailed, easy to understand, historically informed and critical. Social Anthropology
The editors begin with the familiar idea that mortuary rites reproduce the moral community in the face of deaths disruption, but they add that these rites are privileged sites for negotiating the tension between reproduction and historical transformationTaken as a whole this collection balances a serious attempt to understand cultural change with enough ethnographic variety to satisfy anybody. Pacific Affairs
Mortuary Dialogues shows the mortuary practices in the Pacific are a window through which the impact of the different facets of modernity on people's lives, practices and beliefs can be observed...The book contributes to our understanding of what it is like to live in the contemporary Pacific. Doing this through the lens of mortuary rituals is both original and relevant. Anthropological Forum
Applying Mikhail Bakhtins concept of discourse, the editors and many of the contributors focus on both the official and the unofficial voices in the ongoing mortuary debates about Christianity, capitalism, and the statethe three forces that have made a major impact on the lives of the Pacific peoples in the postcolonial era this book is theoretically innovative, ethnographically rich, and very thought provoking. American Ethnologist
One of the more noteworthy of the books features is the great diversity in the content of the dialogues separately reported and the range of theoretical perspectives adopted to account for them within the dialogue rubricEach of these studies is to be praised for the heartfelt poignancy of the stories they tell, which are part and parcel of life in the Pacific today. The diversity of theoretical orientations informing those stories, which is impossible to cover adequately in a review of this nature, will also give readers much of great value to ponder. Anthropos
Mortuary Dialogues is an initiated contribution to the ethnography of Oceania, with relevance far beyond the Pacific Mortuary Dialogues is also a thought-provoking attempt to revitalize anthropological theory on meanings of mortuary ritualMortuary Dialogues demonstrates the value of anthropologists revisiting their fieldwork sites. The authors share a longstanding engagement with the communities they describe. By juxtaposing personal experiences from repeated intervals of fieldwork with readings of historical sources, they achieve solid depth to their analyses of continuity and change in ritual responses to death. Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde
This book is notable for its wealth of ethnographic data on mortuary practices in very different parts of a changing Pacific, as well as for the critique running through it that reminds us that Hertzs model is an idealizationboth emic and eticfrom which the actual practice departs into varying degrees of ambivalence. Roger Lohmann, Trent University
The chapters here offer some very important additions to the discipline and are stimulating and good reads whether or not one agrees with the authors points. Frederick Damon, University of Virginia
