Temporality of Post-mortem Divination and Divination of Post-mortem Temporality

Telban, Borut

doi:10.1111/j.1835-9310.2001.tb00233.x

Cited by 3 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…Another customary practice which enabled communication with the spirits was post‐mortem bamboo divination (Telban ). When an Ambonwari person died divination was used in order to consult spirits as to the cause of death.…”

Section: Mobile Telephony In Ambonwarimentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Whenever people became angry with the boy's spirit and accused him of lying, the bamboo reacted vigorously and the tapping became wild and chaotic. People took this as a sign that the boy's spirit was possessed by an unidentified bad spirit so that the answers given by the bamboo's tapping were not really his (Telban : 70).…”

Section: Mobile Telephony In Ambonwarimentioning

confidence: 99%

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Ringing the living and the dead: Mobile phones in a Sepik society

Telban

Vávrová

2014

Australian J of Anthropology

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Since Digicel services began to operate in remote areas of Papua New Guinea in mid-2007, enthusiasm for mobile telecommunication devices has become a pan-New Guinean phenomenon. During our last fieldwork period, between December 2010 and December 2011, no mobile phone network existed among the Karawari people in the East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea. However, their expectations were high and some individuals had already purchased mobile phones, which they used as torches, radios, and cameras. In Ambonwari village, people were convinced that Digicel would soon build its tower on their land and enable them to ring both the living and the dead. The dead had already interfered with calls and some people were suspected of possessing phone numbers of their deceased relatives. In our article we explore the relationship between mobile phones, the increasing fascination with phone numbers, and the ways in which the Ambonwari perceive, interpret, and engage with the world.Keywords: mobile phone, new technologies, spirits of the dead, religious movements, Karawari people, Sepik, Papua New Guinea Different theories surrounding the impact of technology on societies and cultures have emerged over time. From a substantive perspective new technology is a domineering and irresistible force in its own right. People have no control over it; they have to keep up with new techniques and these need to be efficient. Technology also serves to explain everything that is taking place in the world, be it society, politics, economy, science or art. From this point of view, technology is not neutral but changes cultures and shapes societies and values (Borgmann 1984: 9; Verbeek 2005: 136). From an instrumentalist perspective, however, technology is value-neutral. Human beings have been perceived as tool-makers since the beginning and technology, regardless of its complexity, is simply an instrument that humans use to accomplish certain tasks. Both rationalism and liberal democracy hold to this perspective, leaving values to develop in a private sphere (Borgmann 1984: 10; Verbeek 2005: 136). Recently a new post-phenomenological perspective has criticised both of these approaches, since they separate technology from human beings, their histories and their cultures. Don Ihde, a philosopher with a keen interest in the history of technology and anthropology, has tried to develop a positive phenomenological framework and phenomenologically-oriented hermeneutics for understanding human-technology relations (Ihde

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Section: Mobile Telephony In Ambonwarimentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Mobile Telephony In Ambonwarimentioning

confidence: 99%

Ringing the living and the dead: Mobile phones in a Sepik society

Telban

Vávrová

2014

Australian J of Anthropology

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“…In my previous work on Ambonwari cosmology and temporality (Telban, 1998a(Telban, , 2001(Telban, , 2013, I emphasized the importance of the concept of period, pisinim. Pisinim 'period of limited duration' as a concept imbued with temporality does not stand alone but always appears in a noun phrase, in combination with some other term which 'makes' the period.…”

Section: The Ambonwari and Their Periodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Time is tied to the place, and people continuously produce both themselves as spatio-temporal beings and the space-time of their wider socio-cultural world (Munn, 1983: 280, 1992: 106). Every person is invested with the cultural meanings of space and time as much as space and time are invested with personal meanings (Telban, 2001: 76). Through a firm bond between being and place the latter becomes a mnemonic device for past events and relationships.…”

Section: Episodic Temporality and The Importance Of Radical Discontinmentioning

confidence: 99%

Seeing and holding time: Karawari perceptions of temporalities, calendars and clocks

Telban

2015

Time & Society

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Clock-time differentiates and systematises in a way rarely endorsed by smallscale societies, where the tendency is to reject hierarchy based on the measurement of time. Taking my lead from the Karawari-speaking Ambonwari of the East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea, I introduce the concept of egalitarian temporality produced by never ending competition between different individuals and groups. The villagers are themselves responsible for creating periods and ways of being in both their environment and society, and they actively participate in dramatic episodes intended to cut into their existent ways of life. These 'cuts' then create desired changes. I argue that time in the Sepik and egalitarian small-scale societies in general is very much agentive and thus possessed, held and seen by individuals and groups, with periods defined by and organized around future oriented projects.

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“…During a bamboo (Falck :101–5) or canoe divination the spirit moves a bamboo or canoe and men can ask questions about the circumstances of its death. The spirit answers the questions with ‘yes’ or ‘no’ by moving the bamboo or the canoe (see also Silverman ; Telban , ; Telban and Vávrová ).…”

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confidence: 99%