Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book aims to point out how important expressive genres are in social life. It examines the nexus in relation to her general argument about gender relations in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, most specifically in the Kewa area of the Southern Highlands Province. The book argues that the song genres she examines form a transformational set, in which what begins as experience ends up as ideology reflecting gender hierarchy. It discusses the chronic problems of violence that have plagued the transition to more open forms of politics in Indonesia. The book explores how a turn to traditional ritual specialists among the Kodi people was made, not to justify a resurgence of violent practices, but to constrain these.