ABSTRACT
This chapter utilizes two regions to illustrate the practices and ideologies that entailed in these major rituals, the Anga language area and the Sepik basin, and explores how initiations have shaped anthropological understandings of Melanesia. It considers the abandonment or modification of initiation rituals to suggest that whatever initiation meant to anthropologists, Melanesians valued these rituals differently. According to the ideas of male domination or sexual antagonism, initiations were thus interpreted as reproducing and maintaining male domination, by ritually removing female influence from boys so that they could become adult and warriors. The most influential analyses, dating from the 1970s, were conducted in historical contexts where the influence of Christianity was often marginal, as were the effects of colonial and post-colonial governance. The feminist movement had a considerable impact on academic anthropologists from the 1960s onwards.
