DEBORAH B. GEWERTZ

Henry Whitcomb Professor
Department of Anthropology-Sociology
Amherst College, Amherst MA 01002
Office: (413) 542-2741;  Fax: (413) 542-5838
E-mail: dbgewertz@amherst.edu

EDUCATION

1969        B.A.  Queens College, C.U.N.Y., English Literature, cum laude.

1968-69         Special student,  Princeton University.

1977             Ph.D.   The Graduate School, C.U.N.Y., Anthropology.

RECENT FELLOWSHIPS

1980-81      Amherst College Trustee Faculty Fellowship of $21,000

1980-81      Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Grant of $3,000

1987-88      Amherst College Faculty Research Grant of $7,000

1987-88      N.E.H. Interpretive Research Grant, with Frederick Errington, of  $65,000

1990-91      Amherst College Faculty Research Grant of $9,500

1991-92       Amherst College Faculty Research Grant of $15,500

1995-96      Amherst College Faculty Research Grant of $5,500

1995-96    Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Grant of  $6,300

1995-96     N.S.F. Research Grant, with Frederick Errington, of $91,917

1998         Amherst College Faculty Research Grant of $5,500

1999         Amherst College Faculty Research Grant of $20,000

2000       A.C.L.S./S.S.R.C./N.E.H. International Award of $35,000

2002         Amherst College Faculty Research Grant of $5,000

2006        Amherst College Faculty Research Grant of $19,000

2006        N.S.F. Research Grant, with Frederick Errington, of $99,961

2010        Japan Foundation Grant of $7,000

2010-15  Amherst College Faculty Research Grants of various amounts

RECENT EMPLOYMENT

1983-88      Associate Professor of Anthropology, Amherst College

1985-87      Elizabeth Bruss Reader in Anthropology and Women Studies, Amherst College

1985-87      Chair, Dept. of Anthropology-Sociology, Amherst College

1988-94      Professor of Anthropology, Amherst College

1994-           G. Henry Whitcomb Professor of Anthropology, Amherst College

2002-09    Chair, Dept. of Anthropology-Sociology, Amherst College

2005           Professor, the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, summer    appointment.

2006           Visiting Fellow, University of Auckland.

FIELD RESEARCH

The Chambri and their neighbors of the East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea during 1974-75, June-August, 1979,  December-February, 1983-84, July, l987-January, 1988, June-August, 1994, January-August, 1996 and June, 1999.

Rock Creek, Montana, during the summers of 1985, 1986, 1988, 1989 and 1992.

The Karavarans and their neighbors of the Duke of York Island Group in the East New Britain Province of Papua New Guinea during June-October, 1991.

Executives of Booker Tate, a multinational agricultural advisory firm, during June-July, 1998, and March, 2001.

Plantation workers and managers at Ramu Sugar Limited, a  privately owned sugar plantation whose largest shareholder is the government of Papua New Guinea, at Gusap in the Madang Province during July-August, 1999, January-August, 2000, and June-July, 2001.

Meat processors, importers, exporters, and consumers in Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, and Papua New Guinea during June-August, 2004 and during January-August, 2006.

Food scientists and instant noodle manufacturers and consumers in the U.S.A., U.K. Papua New Guinea, and Japan during June-July 2009 and June-2010-Auigust 2011.

Conservationists, hunters, farmers, and government officials located near Brookings, South Dakota, during June-August, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015. In addition, I banded bluebills along the Mississippi River and consulted with environmentalists and biologists in Arkansas, Mississippi, Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska.

BOOKS

Sepik River Societies: A Historical Ethnography of the Chambri and their Neighbors (New Haven, Yale University Press) 1983.

Cultural Alternatives and a Feminist Anthropology:  An Analysis of Culturally Constructed Gender Interests in  Papua New Guinea (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press) 1987, with Frederick Errington;  paperback edition, 1989.

Twisted Histories, Altered Contexts:  Representing the  Chambri in a World System (Cambridge, Cambridge University  Press) 1991, with Frederick Errington. This book received Honorable Mention for the 1991 Victor Turner Prize in ethnographic writing awarded by the Society for Humanistic Anthropology.

Articulating Change in the “Last Unknown” (Boulder, Colorado, Westview Press) 1995, with Frederick Errington.

Emerging Class in Papua New Guinea:  The Telling of Difference (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press) 1999,  with Frederick Errington.

Yali’s Question:  Sugar, Culture, and History (Chicago, University of Chicago Press) 2004, with Frederick Errington.

Cheap Meat (Berkeley, University of California Press) 2010,  with Frederick Errington.

The Noodle Narratives, (Berkeley, University of California Press) 2013, with Frederick Errington

EDITED VOLUMES

History and Ethnohistory in New Guinea (Sydney, Oceania Monographs) 1985, with Edward Schieffelin.

Myths of Matriarchy Reconsidered (Sydney, Oceania Monographs) 1988.

The Handbook of Sociocultural Anthropology, edited collection under contract to Berg Publishers to be completed during 2010, with James Carrier.

ARTICLES PUBLISHED IN BOOKS

“The Father Who Bore Me: The Role of the Tsambunwuro during Chambri Initiation Ceremonies,” in Rituals of Manhood, Gilbert Herdt, ed. (Berkeley, University of California Press) 1982.

“Of Symbolic Anchors and Sago Soup: The Rhetoric of Exchange among the Chambri of Papua New Guinea,” in Dangerous Words, Donald Brenneis and Fred Myers, eds. (New York, New York University Press) 1984.

“Introduction,” in History and Ethnohistory in New Guinea, Edward Schieffelin and Deborah Gewertz, eds. (Sydney, Oceania Monographs) 1985, with Edward Schieffelin.

“The Golden Age Revisited: A History of the Chambri between 1905-1927,” in History and Ethnohistory in New Guinea, Edward Schieffelin and Deborah Gewertz, eds. (Sydney, Oceania Monographs) 1985.

“The Remarriage of Yebiwali: A Study of Dominance and False Consciousness in a Non-Western Society,” inDealing With Inequality, Marilyn Strathern, ed. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press) 1987, with Frederick Errington.

“Introduction”, in Myths of Matriarchy Reconsidered, Deborah Gewertz, ed., (Sydney, Oceania Monographs) 1988.

“Myths of Matriarchy Re-examined: Indigenous Images of Alternative Gender Relationships,” in Myths of Matriarchy Reconsidered, Deborah Gewertz, ed. (Sydney, Oceania Monographs) 1988, with Frederick Errington.

“The Chambri,” in Encyclopedia of World Cultures, (New Haven,  Human Relations Area Files), 1991.

“The Historical Course of True Love in the Sepik,” in Contemporary Pacific Societies, Victoria Lockwood, et. al. eds. (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, Prentice Hall), 1992, with Frederick Errington.

“We Think, Therefore They Are: On Occidentalizing the World,” in Cultures of Imperialism, Donald Pease and Amy Kaplan, eds. (Durham, Duke University Press) 1994, with Frederick Errington.

“Dueling Currencies in East New Britain: The Construction of Shell Money as National Cultural Property,” inOccidentalism, James Carrier, ed. (Oxford, Oxford University Press), 1995,  with Frederick Errington.

“Toward an Ethnographically Grounded Study of Modernity,” in The Pacific in a Global World, Victoria Lockwood, ed., (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, Prentice Hall), 2003, with Frederick Errington.

“Tourism and Anthropology in a Post-Modern World,” reprinted in Tourists and Tourism, Sharon Gmelch, ed., (New York, Waveland), 2003, with Frederick Errington.

“On Humiliation and Class in Contemporary Papua New Guinea,” in The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia, Joel Robbins and Holy  Wardlow, eds., (Hampshire, England, Ashgate Press), 2005, with  Frederick Errington.

“Jealous Women in the Cane,” in Empirical Futures:  Anthropologists and Historians Engage the Work of Sidney W. Mintz, Aisha Kahn, George Baca and Stephen Palmie, eds., (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press), 2009, pp. 173-195, with Frederick Errington.

“Excusing the Haves and Blaming the Have-Nots in Jared Diamond’s Histories,” inQuestioning Collapse, Patricia McAnany and Norman Yoffee, eds., (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press), 2010, pp. 329-351, with Frederick Errington.

 

ARTICLES PUBLISHED IN JOURNALS

“The Politics of Affinal Exchange: Chambri as a Client Market,” Ethnology, July, 1977.

“On Whom Depends the Action of the Elements: Debating among the Chambri,” Journal of Polynesian Society, September, 1977.

“From Sago-Suppliers to Entrepreneurs: Marketing and Migration in the Middle Sepik,” Oceania, December, 1977.

“Tit for Tat: Barter Markets in the Middle Sepik,” Anthropological Quarterly, January, 1978.

“The Consequences of Constancy among the Chambri,” Oceania, June, 1979.

“The Myth of the Blood Men: An Explanation of Chambri Warfare,” Journal of Anthropological Research, Winter, 1979.

“Of Symbolic Anchors and Sago Soup: The Rhetoric of Exchange among the Chambri of Papua New Guinea,”Journal of Polynesian Society, September, 1980.

“An Historical Reconsideration of Female Dominance among the Chambri of Papua New Guinea,” American Ethnologist, February, 1981.

“Deviance Unplaced: The Story of Kaviwon Reconsidered,” Social Analysis, December, 1982.

“The Tchambuli Concept of Persons:  A Critique of Individualism in the Works of Mead and Chodorow,”American Anthropologist, September, 1984.

“The Chief of the Chambri: Social Change and Cultural Permeability among a New Guinea People,” American Ethnologist, August, 1985, with Frederick Errington.

“The Confluence of Powers: Entropy and Importation among the Chambri,” Oceania, December, 1986, with Frederick Errington.

“Of Unfinished Dialogues and Paper Pigs,” American Ethnologist, May, 1987, with Frederick Errington.

“Exemplars and the Reproduction of Everyday Life,” Dialectical Anthropology, Vol. 13, 1988, with Frederick Errington.

“Tourism and Anthropology in a Post-Modern World,” Oceania, Vol. 61, 1989, with Frederick Errington.

“Symmetrical Schizmogenesis Revisited: Gewertz Responds to Bowden,” Oceania, March, 1991.

“We Think, Therefore They Are: On Occidentalizing the World,” Anthropological Quarterly, March, 1991, with Frederick Errington.

“Responses from the Field,” Pacific Studies, Vol. 16, 1993, with Frederick Errington.

“First Contact With God: Revivalism in the Duke of York Islands,” Cultural Anthropology, August, 1993, with Frederick Errington.

“The Triumph of Capitalism in East New Britain?  A Contemporary Papua New Guinea Rhetoric of Motives,”Oceania, September, 1993, with Frederick Errington.

“The Discipline at Its Best,” Anthropology Newsletter, October, 1993, with Frederick Errington.

“From Darkness to Light in the George Brown Jubilee: The Invention of Non-tradition and the Inscription of a National History in East New Britain,” American Ethnologist, February, 1994, with Frederick Errington.

“The Individuation of Tradition in a Papua New Guinea Modernity,” American Anthropologist, March, 1996, with Frederick Errington.

“On PepsiCo and Piety in a Papua New Guinea Modernity, American Ethnologist, August, 1996, with Frederick Errington.

“The Wewak Rotary Club: The Middle Class in Papua New Guinea,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, June, 1997, with Frederick Errington.

“Why We Return to Papua New Guinea,” Anthropological Quarterly, July, 1997, with Frederick Errington

“Sleights of Hand in the Construction of Desire in a Papua New Guinean Modernity,” Contemporary Pacific, Fall, 1998, with Frederick Errington.

“The Telling of Class in Papua New Guinea,” Response to Reviews in the Book Review Forum, Contemporary Pacific, Spring, 2001, with Frederick Errington.

“On the Generification of Culture:  From Blow Fish to Melanesian,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, September, 2001, with Frederick Errington.

“The Alimentary Forms of the Global Life,” American Anthropologist, September, 2007, with Frederick Errington.

“Pacific Island Gastrologies: Following the Flaps,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Association, September, 2008, in press, with Frederick Errington.

“Expanding Definitions, Contracting Contexts:  A Comment on Mosko’s ‘Partible Penitents’,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2010, Vol 16: 250-252, with Frederick Errington.

“The Sustainability Wrangles,” City and Society, under review.
REVIEWS

Of The Leaders and the Led by Ian Hogbin and Ongka by Andrew Strathern in the American Ethnologist, August, 1980.

Of The Highland Peoples of New Guinea by Paula Brown in the Journal of Asian Thought and Society, April, 1980.

Of A New Guinea Landscape by K.J. Patakai-Schweizer in the American Anthropologist, June, 1981.

Of Growing Up in Polynesia by Jane and James Ritchie in the Journal of Asian Thought and Society, 1981.

Of Contrast and Context in a New Guinea Culture, by Ernest Brandewie in the American Anthropologist, September, 1982.

Of A Thousand Graduates by Ian Howie-Willis in Pacific Studies, Spring, 1982.

Of Vanuatu edited by Michael Allen in the American Anthropologist, December, 1982.

Of Inequality in New Guinea Highlands Societies edited by Andrew Strathern in the Journal of Polynesian Society, March, 1984.

Of Yena: Art and Ceremony in a Sepik Society by Ross Bowden in Oceania, December, 1985.

Of Ways of Exchange by D. K. Feil in the Journal of Polynesian Society, December, 1985.

Of Rethinking Women’s Roles edited by Denise O’Brien and Sharon Tiffany in the American Ethnologist, February, 1986.

Of Gender and Social Life edited by Anna Yeatman in Oceania, March, 1986.

Of the films Namekas: Music in Lake Chambri and Kama Wosi: Music in the Trobriands by Les McLaren, in theAmerican Anthropologist, June, 1986.

Of Divine Hunger by Peggy Sanday, in the New York Times Book Review, May, 1987.

Of The Creation of Patriarchy by Gerda Lerner, in the American Ethnologist, August, 1988.

Of What Gifts Engender by Rena Lederman, in Ethnohistory, Spring, 1989.

Of Always Hungry, Never Greedy by Miriam Kahn, in the Medical Anthropology Quarterly, June, 1989.

Of the film, Cannibal Tours, by Dennis O’Rourke, in the American Anthropologist, June, 1989, with Frederick Errington.

Of The Gender of the Gift by Marilyn Strathern, in the American Anthropologist, September, 1990.

Of the film, Joe Leahy’s Neighbors, by Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson, in the American Anthropologist, September, 1990, with Frederick Errington.

Of Wage Trade and Exchange in Melanesia by James and Achsah Carrier, in the American Ethnologist, November, 1990.

Of  Sacred Queens and Women of Consequence by Jocelyn Linnekin, in the  American Anthropologist, December, 1991.

Of Gone Primitive by Mariana Torgovnick, in the American Anthropologist, December, 1991.

Of  the film, Black Harvest, by Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson, in the American Anthropologist, December, 1992, with Frederick  Errington.

Of Stealing People’s Names by Simon Harrison, in Man, September, 1993.

Of The Abandoned Narcotic by Ron Brunton, in the American Ethnologist, August, 1994.

Of Routes by James Clifford, in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, with Frederick Errington, June, 1998.

Of Encompassing Modernity by Edward LiPuma, in the Contemporary Pacific, Fall, 2002.

Of Intertwined Lives: Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict and their Circle by Lois Banner, in Ms., Fall, 2003.

Of Venice, The Tourist Maze, by Robert Davis and Garry Marvin, in American Ethnologist, November, 2005.

Of The Unseen City: Anthropological Perspectives on Port Moresby by Michael Goddard, in Australian Journal of Anthropology, November, 2006.

Of Ethnography as Commentary: Writing from the Virtual Archive by Johannes Fabian in  Anthropology and Humanism, forthcoming, with Frederick Errington.

 

EDITORSHIPS

A member of the editorial board of the Monograph Series of the Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania, 1982-1987.

Editor, Special Publications of the Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania, 1987-1993.

Member of the editorial board of Oceania publications, 1989-present.

Associate Editor of the American Ethnologist, 1995-1998.

Associate Editor of Ethnos, 1997-2001

Associate Editor of the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 1998-2001

OTHER (SELECTED) PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES

Invited speaker, Seminar in Social Theory, University of Kentucky, 2009.

Appointed the George and Mary Foster Lecturer for the year 2007, Southern Methodist University.

Appointed Lewis Henry Morgan Lecturer for the year 2002 (with Frederick Errington), University of Rochester.

Appointed a member of the review board of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, 2001-2003.

Appointed to the selection committee for junior grants provided by the American Council of Learned Societies, 2003.

Appointed co-convener of the Melanesia Interest Group within the American Anthropological Association, 2001-2003.

Elected Five College 25th Anniversary Lecturer by colleagues from Amherst, Smith, Mount Holyoke, Hampshire and the  University of Massachusetts.

Keynote speaker (with Frederick Errington) at the 1995 meetings of the Northeastern Anthropological Association.

Program Co-Chair (with Frederick Errington) of the 1993 meetings of the American Anthropological Association.