The Sun and the Shakers, Again: Enga, Ipili, and Somaip Perspectives on the Cult of Ain: Part One.

In the middle 1940s, at a time when white people were just beginning to penetrate the western highlands of what would become Papua New Guinea, a cult spread quickly among Engas, Ipili speakers, and Somaips. In the seminal article 'The Sun and the Shakers' published almost 40 years ago, Mervyn J. Meg...

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Publicado en:Oceania Vol. 81; no. 2; pp. 113 - 137
Autor principal: Biersack, Aletta
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Wiley-Blackwell Jul2011
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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        10.1002/j.1834-4461.2011.tb00097.x
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        atl: The Sun and the Shakers, Again: Enga, Ipili, and Somaip Perspectives on the Cult of Ain: Part One.
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        au: Biersack, Aletta
        affil: University of Oregon
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        Cults
        Ipili (Papua New Guinean people)
        Enga (Papua New Guinean people)
        Religious movements
        Religions
        Papua New Guinea
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          Cults
          Ipili (Papua New Guinean people)
          Enga (Papua New Guinean people)
          Religious movements
          Religions
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        cosmology
        cultural history
        first contact
        New Guinea
        western highlands
      ab: In the middle 1940s, at a time when white people were just beginning to penetrate the western highlands of what would become Papua New Guinea, a cult spread quickly among Engas, Ipili speakers, and Somaips. In the seminal article 'The Sun and the Shakers' published almost 40 years ago, Mervyn J. Meggitt would call this cult the 'Cult of Ain.' The cult's core feature involved a massive sacrifice of pigs to the sun in an attempt to enlist the sun's aid. Participants stared at the sun and shook, entering a trance-like state. While massive pig sacrifices to the sun occurred in all cult variants, local versions of the cult differed in emphasizing one or two themes: acquiring wealth (pigs and pearlshells but also white manufactured goods) and/or ascending to the sky. Interpretations of the cult reflect this variation, some focusing on apparent cargo cultic dimensions while others train on the cult's millenarian aspects. This reprise of Meggitt's article argues that the themes of wealth acquisition and ascent to the sky were at base the same, intelligible with respect to the cosmological discourse that so clearly informed all the cult's manifestations (hence the emphasis upon the sun), a discourse that this article attempts to interpret. This, the first of a two-part article, summarizes what is known of Cult of Ain variants, highlighting the features other reporters have emphasized as well as those that may provide insight into underlying cultural and even transcultural logics.
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