VIDEO GUIDE FOR "PAPUA NEW GUINEA: ANTHROPOLOGY ON TRIAL"

1. Listen carefully to the comments made by the people Margaret Mead studied in Papua New Guinea (the villages of Pere and Mbunai on Manus island) and Samoa. What is their perception of her anthropological fieldwork?

2. What do you think caused Mead’s different assessment of the two villages of Pere and Mbunai?

3. What conditions have changed since Mead first did her fieldwork in Papua New Guinea that might influence people’s impressions of her work?

4. What did Mead contribute to the Papua New Guineans? Should anthropologists be required to give something back to the communities they work in?

5. How is John Barker’s fieldwork in New Guinea similar to or different from that of Mead’s?

6. Barker speaks of an “uneven relationship” between anthropologists and the people they study. What does this imply?

7. What does Andrew Strathern’s fieldwork with the Kwelka people reveal about the relationship of anthropologists to those studied? And how much does the outsider need to become like an insider?