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Review of Barth, Cosmologies in the Making

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Barth was an extremely distinguished anthropologist, who did ethnographic fieldwork all over the world. This is an extremely unusual venture into anthropological theory that grew directly out of trying to make sense of a very puzzling aspect of that fieldwork. In 1969, Barth lived among the Baktaman, "a community of 185 inhabitants" in highland New Guinea, where he documented, and participated in, an extremely elaborate series of (male) initiation rituals and their associated mythology. In 1981--1982, he revisited Baktaman, but also a number of other communities which also were part of the same "Mountain Ok" group of peoples, "a total population of c. 15,000 individuals, of six closely related language communities, occupying c. 10,000 km 2 km2 of upland forests and mountains" (p. 2). He also drew on the writings of about a dozen other anthropologists who had in the meanwhile done work among the Mountain Ok. His goal was to try to make sense of why all these communities had different

Review of Barth, Cosmologies in the Making The Bactra Review: Occasional and eclectic book reviews by Cosma Shalizi 175 Cosmologies in the Making A Generative Approach to Cultural Variation in Inner New Guinea by Fredrik Barth Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1987, doi:10.1017/CBO9780511607707 Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology, volume 64 Cosmology and Cosmologists --- The Modern Ok School Barth was an extremely distinguished anthropologist, who did ethnographic fieldwork all over the world. This is an extremely unusual venture into anthropological theory that grew directl

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