ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book concerns the ways Melanesians experience and deals with moral dilemmas. It presents the Burridge's sympathetic treatment of Christian missionaries. It shows that individuals caught in the moral contradictions of the wantok system often pay a high psychological price. The book suggests that the range of figures is expanding in tandem with the fracturing of social experience. It then moves toward a demand for a renewed political anthropology that refuses to take the modern separation between the realm of politics and the morality of everyday social life for granted. It also provides a detailed comparison of the Tangu and Gebusi peoples of the Western Province. The book focuses upon individuals whose actions exemplify new moral possibilities under the expanding conditions of modernity.
