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    Metaphysical personhood and traditional South Fore mortuary rites

    Access Status
    Fulltext not available
    Authors
    Whitfield, J.
    Pako, W.
    Alpers, Michael Philip
    Date
    2016
    Type
    Journal Article
    
    Metadata
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    Citation
    Whitfield, J. and Pako, W. and Alpers, M.P. 2016. Metaphysical personhood and traditional South Fore mortuary rites. Journal de la Societe des Oceanistes. 141 (2): pp. 303-321.
    Source Title
    Journal de la Societe des Oceanistes
    ISSN
    0300-953X
    School
    Centre for International Health
    URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/36942
    Collection
    • Curtin Research Publications
    Abstract

    © Tous droits réserv's. Ethnographic studies on Melanesian concepts of the human body and religion have expanded our understandings of the concept of personhood. Melanesian ethnographers have used a number of descriptive words to describe the metaphysical components of the person, including: soul, spirit, life force, ghost, and vital and spiritual essence. By investigating the traditional mortuary rites of the South Fore people in Papua New Guinea, which included the practice of endocannibalism, investigators were able to distinguish the 5 souls of the composite metaphysical person and their relationship to the humors of the body. An understanding of the South Fore cosmology and its relationship to its human inhabitants was required to understand these deeply embedded concepts. The South Fore person was found to be composed of 5 souls and bodily humors which together formed a composite individual, yet partible through division. We elucidated the concepts of the 5 souls of the Fore person, which revealed a strong correlation between the landscape with its overlying cosmology and the cultural bodily humors, and demonstrated their relationship to the power of the land.

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