Tag Archives: Papua New Guinea

Ancestral Lines: Return to Uiaku

In this post, series editor John Barker reflects on his last trip to Uiaku, Papua New Guinea, thirteen years after the original publication of Ancestral Lines: The Maisin of Papua New Guinea and the Fate of the Rainforest. Like many … read more…

  • dateDecember 1, 2021
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  • posted byJohn Barker
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Ancestral Lines, Second Edition

At the core of the Teaching Culture series of ethnographies is John Barker’s Ancestral Lines: The Maisin of Papua New Guinea and the Fate of the Rainforest. This book has been tremendously successful in college and university classrooms because of its beautiful writing, its clear organization, and because it does not talk down to or bore students. This week, the book is available in a new edition, and we asked John Barker, the author and editor of the Teaching Culture series, to say a few words about its publication and the history behind the book. read more…

  • dateApril 4, 2016
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  • posted byJohn Barker
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A Teacher’s Review of Ancestral Lines: The Maisin of Papua New Guinea and the Fate of the Rainforest

I have taught Ancestral Lines: The Maisin of Papua New Guinea and the Fate of the Rainforest by John Barker every semester since it came out in 2008. Without hesitation, it is my favourite teaching ethnography. Allow me to share with you how I teach with it… read more…

  • dateNovember 11, 2014
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  • posted byThomas McIlwraith
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Author Interview: John Barker

In the past several years, Ancestral Lines: The Maisin of Papua New Guinea and the Fate of the Rainforest has become one of the most popular ethnographies for first-year undergraduate courses in North America. The author, John Barker, shares his motivation for writing the ethnography, how he consciously designed it to work with or without a supporting textbook, and how he approaches undergraduate teaching. read more…

  • dateSeptember 26, 2013
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  • posted byAnna
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Cat’s Cradles, Diamond Jenness, and a Non-Traditional Approach to Writing a Four-Field Anthropology Textbook

When I begin writing a textbook (I am now working on my fifth), I typically begin by writing down ideas from my first class of the semester. I do not look at how authors of similar books write their introductions (that’s for later on, when I am checking what I might have missed). I play an anthropological John Nash, the “crazy” mathematician… read more…

  • dateSeptember 19, 2013
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  • posted byJohn Steckley
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