The Meaning of Whitemen: Race and Modernity in the Orokaiva Cultural World Paperback – July 17, 2006
by Ira Bashkow (Author)
4.6 out of 5 stars 12 ratings
A familiar cultural presence for people the world over, “the whiteman” has come to personify the legacy of colonialism, the face of Western modernity, and the force of globalization. Focusing on the cultural meanings of whitemen in the Orokaiva society of Papua New Guinea, this book provides a fresh approach to understanding how race is symbolically constructed and why racial stereotypes endure in the face of counterevidence.
While Papua New Guinea’s resident white population has been severely reduced due to postcolonial white flight, the whiteman remains a significant racial and cultural other here—not only as an archetype of power and wealth in the modern arena, but also as a foil for people’s evaluations of themselves within vernacular frames of meaning. As Ira Bashkow explains, ideas of self versus other need not always be anti-humanistic or deprecatory, but can be a creative and potentially constructive part of all cultures.
A brilliant analysis of whiteness and race in a non-Western society, The Meaning of Whitemen turns traditional ethnography to the purpose of understanding how others see us.
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328 pages
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Ira Bashkow is associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Virginia.
Customer Reviews:
4.6 out of 5 stars 12 ratings
Top reviews from the United States
River
5.0 out of 5 stars Five starsReviewed in the United States on December 7, 2016
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The intro is a little tough to get through, but on the whole, this book was very informative!
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LawStudentSellsNiceBooks
5.0 out of 5 stars ExcellentReviewed in the United States on March 8, 2007
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My professor wrote this book. It is fascinating,and so is he. This is a very detailed account, very complete, and quite a good read.
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joel
5.0 out of 5 stars An intellectual treatReviewed in the United States on August 5, 2015
Here is an intellectual treat of the first order. I envy you - it's still in front of you. Let me say - I am not an anthropologist or an expert on Papua New Guinea, just a general reader.
Don't be put off by lack of familiarity with the Orakaiva people or lack of background on Papua New Guinea.
Bashkow will explain whatever you need to know, clearly and without jargon. What you will get is the product of years of fieldwork living in a little known corner of the world.
But the author's focus is directed at how the Orakaiva see whitepeople (mostly people with white skin, but including cultural outsiders such as Africans, 'black' white people). While absorbing details about this unfamiliar Melanesian world, you'll be making all sorts of connections to the way The Other is viewed in places you are familiar with.
Let me try to substantiate my praise of the book by offering you a tidbit from the introduction. Bashkow is concerned to justify his methods. Surely, as a whiteman himself, the Orakaiva could not be expected to tell him what they really think about whitemen. After all, it's not as if he could blend into the background. He describes himself as sort of like Ralph Ellison's invisible man - in reverse, the object of general attention everywhere he went. I expected Bashkow to describe how he made friends and worked his way into the hearts of the Orakaiva. But !!! he embraces the inequality
in the situation, explaining that the standard anthropologist is writing a romance when s/he describes the union of anthropolgist and 'primitive'. This observation was enough to make me reconsider how this preference for 'romance' has contaminated all previous anthropology. By the way, please do not assume that Bashkow is any way a 'conservative' just because he refuses to believe that the inequality in anthropological fieldwork situations cannot be put aside.
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OwlMama
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant and NeededReviewed in the United States on November 10, 2017
Ira Bashkow's book, "The Meaning of Whitemen," is a redemptive book for those exhausted by anthropological exploitation and cultural voyeurism. To turn anthropology on its head and study how whitemen are seen, as outsiders looking in, is a brilliant and needed lens.
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