Angielski
The passage from pagan to Christian and tribesman to citizen has been exhaustively documented, but the people who make up that story have mostly been written out of it. This account, set in Nias, Indonesia, captures the human dilemmas attending the world-historical transformation from tribalism to modernity. The author allows the complexity of the issues - the hold of the past on the present, perspectives on life and death, vengeance and morality - to emerge through dramatic encounters. Innovative and personally challenging, this book is about a radically different world and the search for a common humanity that underlies cultural difference. It is also about the process of coming to understand another society and the formation of an anthropologist. Interweaving a gripping narrative of fieldwork with the drama of life in a tribal society in extremis, this book is essential reading for students of anthropology and the general reader alike.
