Big Men: Afterthoughts

Abstract

We have been pleased to have the support of the editorial board of Ethnology, which has made the Pacific area, and in particular Melanesia, a subject of special interest this year. In 1990 Ethnology published a set of papers whose first airing was in November 1987 at the 86th annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Chicago, at a symposium organized by Paula Brown and James B. Watson entitled Big Man?Strong Man --Culture Hero. Most of the papers presented there discussed some new questions about that time-honored subject, big men. Following this, expansion of some papers, and some withdrawals, a group of papers were offered to the editor of Ethnology in 1989. After reviews and re visions, gaining some independent contributions and losing some from the original group, Ethnology published a number of papers which bear on the Melanesian theme or some related questions of leadership, group structure and action, politics, and law. At the editor's request, I have assembled a few comments as, I hope, a forecast rather than a finale.

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