EBOOK
A Death in the Rainforest
How a Language and a Way of Life Came to an End in Papua New Guinea
Don Kulick4.8
(5)
About
"Perhaps the finest and most profound account of ethnographic fieldwork and discovery that has ever entered the anthropological literature."
-The Wall Street Journal
"If you want to experience a profoundly different culture without the exhausting travel (to say nothing of the cost), this is an excellent choice."
-The Washington Post One of Time's 32 Books You Need to Read This Summer * One of National Geographic's Best Travel Books of Summer
As a young anthropologist, Don Kulick went to the tiny village of Gapun in New Guinea to document the death of the native language, Tayap. He arrived knowing that you can't study a language without understanding the daily lives of the people who speak it: how they talk to their children, how they argue, how they gossip, how they joke. Over the course of thirty years, as he returned again and again to document the vanishing language, he found himself inexorably drawn into the lives and world of the Gapuners, and implicated in their destiny.
In A Death in the Rainforest, Kulick takes us inside the village as he came to know it, revealing what it is like to live in a difficult-to-get-to village of two hundred people, carved out like a cleft in the middle of a tropical rainforest. And in doing so, he also gives us a brilliant interrogation of what it means to study a culture, an illuminating look at the impact of Western culture on the farthest reaches of the globe-and, ultimately, the story of why this anthropologist realized that he had to give up his study of this language and this village.
Don Kulick is the author or editor of more than a dozen books on topics that range from the lives of transgender sex workers to the anthropology of fat. He has conducted extensive anthropological fieldwork in Papua New Guinea, Brazil, and Scandinavia. He is the recipient of numerous grants and honors, including an NEH Fellowship, an A. W. Mellon Foundation Guest Professorship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is currently Distinguished University Professor of Anthropology at Uppsala University in Sweden, where he directs the research program Engaging Vulnerability. "Perhaps the finest and most profound account of ethnographic fieldwork and discovery that has ever entered the anthropological literature."
-The Wall Street Journal
"If you want to experience a profoundly different culture without the exhausting travel (to say nothing of the cost), this is an excellent choice."
-The Washington Post
"What does it take to study a culture? Anthropologist Don Kulick visited the small village of Gapun in New Guinea on and off for 30 years to study its dying language, Tayap. Blending academic discourse, linguistics and his personal stories about life in the remote community, A Death in the Rainforest illuminates the ways a society can change over time and become swallowed by forces of the outside world."
-Time
"An important history lesson from an anthropologist who spent three decades watching a language and a people go extinct as the rainforest around them disappeared."-The Revelator
"Anthropologist Kulick tells a story of cultural and linguistic transformation and exchange in this clever, empathetic memoir of his time spent in Gapun, a remote village in Papua New Guinea . . . Despite lots of fascinating detail about a culture that appears very different from the modern West, the book concludes with a firm and moving reminder about shared similarities and an exhortation to better honor collective responsibilities. This frank, passionate work will move readers interested in a thoughtful contemplation of culture and globalization."
-Publishers Weekly
"In this captivating narrative, [Kulick] considers complex questions about race and power in anthropological research, the nature of relationships among very different people, and the challenges of living in such a demanding environment. Kulick's e
-The Wall Street Journal
"If you want to experience a profoundly different culture without the exhausting travel (to say nothing of the cost), this is an excellent choice."
-The Washington Post One of Time's 32 Books You Need to Read This Summer * One of National Geographic's Best Travel Books of Summer
As a young anthropologist, Don Kulick went to the tiny village of Gapun in New Guinea to document the death of the native language, Tayap. He arrived knowing that you can't study a language without understanding the daily lives of the people who speak it: how they talk to their children, how they argue, how they gossip, how they joke. Over the course of thirty years, as he returned again and again to document the vanishing language, he found himself inexorably drawn into the lives and world of the Gapuners, and implicated in their destiny.
In A Death in the Rainforest, Kulick takes us inside the village as he came to know it, revealing what it is like to live in a difficult-to-get-to village of two hundred people, carved out like a cleft in the middle of a tropical rainforest. And in doing so, he also gives us a brilliant interrogation of what it means to study a culture, an illuminating look at the impact of Western culture on the farthest reaches of the globe-and, ultimately, the story of why this anthropologist realized that he had to give up his study of this language and this village.
Don Kulick is the author or editor of more than a dozen books on topics that range from the lives of transgender sex workers to the anthropology of fat. He has conducted extensive anthropological fieldwork in Papua New Guinea, Brazil, and Scandinavia. He is the recipient of numerous grants and honors, including an NEH Fellowship, an A. W. Mellon Foundation Guest Professorship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is currently Distinguished University Professor of Anthropology at Uppsala University in Sweden, where he directs the research program Engaging Vulnerability. "Perhaps the finest and most profound account of ethnographic fieldwork and discovery that has ever entered the anthropological literature."
-The Wall Street Journal
"If you want to experience a profoundly different culture without the exhausting travel (to say nothing of the cost), this is an excellent choice."
-The Washington Post
"What does it take to study a culture? Anthropologist Don Kulick visited the small village of Gapun in New Guinea on and off for 30 years to study its dying language, Tayap. Blending academic discourse, linguistics and his personal stories about life in the remote community, A Death in the Rainforest illuminates the ways a society can change over time and become swallowed by forces of the outside world."
-Time
"An important history lesson from an anthropologist who spent three decades watching a language and a people go extinct as the rainforest around them disappeared."-The Revelator
"Anthropologist Kulick tells a story of cultural and linguistic transformation and exchange in this clever, empathetic memoir of his time spent in Gapun, a remote village in Papua New Guinea . . . Despite lots of fascinating detail about a culture that appears very different from the modern West, the book concludes with a firm and moving reminder about shared similarities and an exhortation to better honor collective responsibilities. This frank, passionate work will move readers interested in a thoughtful contemplation of culture and globalization."
-Publishers Weekly
"In this captivating narrative, [Kulick] considers complex questions about race and power in anthropological research, the nature of relationships among very different people, and the challenges of living in such a demanding environment. Kulick's e