Knut Mikjel Rio is Associate Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen. He has conducted long-term fieldwork in Vanuatu in the western Pacific, and research themes relate to ideas about social ontology, production and ceremonial and the relation between the monetary economy and sorcery in Vanuatu.

List of maps and illustrations

Foreword: "Putting people first"

Acknowledgements
Note on language

Chapter 1. Introduction

Chapter 2. Kinship and sand-drawing
Chapter 3. The totalising third party
Chapter 4. The circles of marriage
Chapter 5. Of yams and men
Chapter 6. The intentionality of ceremonial agency
Chapter 7. Displaying life after Death
Chapter 8. The phenomenology of Ambrym exchange
Chapter 9. Conclusions: Denying the gift

Appendices
Bibliography
Index

Focusing on different forms of agency in North Ambrym social life, the author demonstrates the potency of outsiders at different times and in different situations in Ambrym society. This model challenges the premises of much Western thinking about reciprocity, and suggests new directions in the analysis of Melanesian societies