The Island of Menstruating Men: Religion in Wogeo, New Guinea

by Herbert Ian Hogbin

Ian Hogbin belongs to anthropology's heroic age. He was a member of the brilliant between-the-wars generation that included Raymond Firth, Reo Fortune, Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, and Hortense Powdermaker, all of whom pioneered modern field research in the insular South Pacific. The Island of Menstruating Men was a path-breaking exploration of gender in Wogeo when first published. Today it remains an important full-length study of a Melanesian religion, examining it in relation to other facets of culture-mythology, beliefs about illness and death, growth and maturity, magic, social structure, and morality. It is an articulate, insightful examination of the meaning of tradition and of the integration of culture. It is also a captivating account of ethnocentrism and the Wogeo's justification for it, exemplifying, in miniature, what appears to be one of the great problems of the human species. Titles of related interest also available from Waveland Rappaport, Pigs for the Rituals in the Ecology of a New Guinea People, Second Edition (ISBN 9781577661016) and Sillitoe-Sillitoe, Grass-Clearing A Factional Ethnography of Life in the New Guinea Highlands (ISBN 9781577666011).

Genres: Anthropology, Nonfiction

203 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1970

Reviews

[Blair Hodges · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book is pretty dated, but it is interesting enough to get an idea of a religious worldview you are likely to have not encountered in the West.

[Dan Gunderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book for an anthropology class -- it was interesting.

[Valerie Baber · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was an assigned textbook for a Lit class several years back. Not my thing.

[jessica wilson · Rating 2 out of 5]

culturally interesting but the assumptions made in the observations irked me. i suppose i should keep in mind that the author visited New Guinea back in the thirties but still...

[Ben Kimutai]

Interesting Insite into new cultures