Payback

Download or read book Payback written by G. W. Trompf and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1994-07-14 with total page 574 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this ambitious study, the first monograph on religion and "the logic of retribution," Professor Trompf shows how various aspects of "payback," both negative and positive, provide the best indices to an understanding of Melanesian views of life. The book explores the reasons why people "pay back" and opens up a whole new dimension in the cross-cultural study of human consciousness. The author conducts his readers through the most complex anthropological pageant on earth, illustrating his arguments from western New Guinea to Fiji.