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The Meaning of Whitemen: Race and Modernity in the Orokaiva Cultural World
A familiar cultural presence for people the world over, “the whiteman” has come to personify the legacy of colonialism, the face of Western modernity, and the force of globalization. Focusing on the cultural meanings of whitemen in the Orokaiva society of Papua New Guinea, this book provides a fresh approach to understanding how race is symbolically constructed and why racial stereotypes endure in the face of counterevidence.
While Papua New Guinea’s resident white population has been severely reduced due to postcolonial white flight, the whiteman remains a significant racial and cultural other here—not only as an archetype of power and wealth in the modern arena, but also as a foil for people’s evaluations of themselves within vernacular frames of meaning. As Ira Bashkow explains, ideas of self versus other need not always be anti-humanistic or deprecatory, but can be a creative and potentially constructive part of all cultures.
A brilliant analysis of whiteness and race in a non-Western society, The Meaning of Whitemen turns traditional ethnography to the purpose of understanding how others see us.
While Papua New Guinea’s resident white population has been severely reduced due to postcolonial white flight, the whiteman remains a significant racial and cultural other here—not only as an archetype of power and wealth in the modern arena, but also as a foil for people’s evaluations of themselves within vernacular frames of meaning. As Ira Bashkow explains, ideas of self versus other need not always be anti-humanistic or deprecatory, but can be a creative and potentially constructive part of all cultures.
A brilliant analysis of whiteness and race in a non-Western society, The Meaning of Whitemen turns traditional ethnography to the purpose of understanding how others see us.
328 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2006
About the author
Ira Bashkow
2 booksI am a cultural anthropologist with research interests in globalization, development, corporations, race, historical anthropology, and the history of anthropology. I did fieldwork in the Pacific in two regions of Papua New Guinea: Orokaiva in Oro Province and Arapesh in East Sepik Province.
My new book is The Meaning of Whitemen: Race and Modernity in the Orokaiva Cultural World. This book examines how Orokaiva and other Papua New Guineans conceptualize "whitemen" and the West through stereotypes that are morally-charged with the people's own evaluations of western power, wealth, and race privilege. By analyzing race outside the familiar landscape of western racial politics and assumptions, the book provides a fresh approach to understanding how race is culturally constructed, showing how racial categories can be grounded in "raced" material objects, and explaining why racial stereotypes stubbornly persist in the face of counterevidence.
A project that began as an "out-take" from this book is my work-in-progress on the global spread of western clock and calendrical time. This article examines the symbolism of western time-keeping in Orokaiva development, where it is reinterpreted through Orokaiva moral assumptions and acquires racial significance as a symbol of "whitemanship."
Another Orokaiva book project, for which I have collected materials and developed ideas, is a historical ethnography of a native prophetic movement that arose among Orokaiva peoples under colonialism. At the center of the Taro Cult were ecstatic trance rituals in which the spirits of personified taro plants inspired prophets with new knowledge, precepts, prohibitions, gardening techniques, dances, and rituals. Taro Cult prophecy responded to Orokaiva people's new experience of colonialism by revitalizing tradition while simultaneously offering a "veiled" discourse that covertly expressed interpretations of the situation of colonial domination in terms that opened up novel possibilities for pan-Orokaiva community and identity. The book, which I am calling The Taro Cult: Prophecy and Power in Colonial Papua, engages scholarly debates over the politics of popular religious movements involving prophecy, spirit possession, and shamanism in colonial situations.
Through my teaching on globalization, I have recently begun a new project on the theoretical implications of the rise of corporate personhood. The corporation, or limited-liability joint-stock company, is the dominant institutional form of our time, with sui generis characteristics that cannot be reduced to the individuals who own, manage, and work for it. Through its public relations and marketing efforts, it powerfully shapes public discourse, normalizing hedonistic conceptions of social relations and contributing to the ideological transformation of the individual from producer to consumer. Indeed, the corporation has become an agent par excellence of cultural production, complicating our conventional view of the relationship between the individual and culture. So a proper understanding of the corporation is essential if we are to improve upon oversimplified producer-consumer (and producer-consumer-nation-state) models of the economy, and this is also a productive and appropriate focus of anthropologists' critical energies, which for too long have been wasted criticizing lesser powers for lesser wrongs.
Another important side of my research is the history of anthropology, which is what initially brought me into the field. Here my special interest is in examining how past anthropologists were perceived by their informants in the field, and how this affected their findings, a kind of study that combines the history of anthropology with historical ethnography. In this vein I've written about the colonial context of David Schneider's fieldwork on Yap (Micronesia) during the U.S. naval colonial administration of the islands after World War II. I am currently working with Lise Dobrin on
My new book is The Meaning of Whitemen: Race and Modernity in the Orokaiva Cultural World. This book examines how Orokaiva and other Papua New Guineans conceptualize "whitemen" and the West through stereotypes that are morally-charged with the people's own evaluations of western power, wealth, and race privilege. By analyzing race outside the familiar landscape of western racial politics and assumptions, the book provides a fresh approach to understanding how race is culturally constructed, showing how racial categories can be grounded in "raced" material objects, and explaining why racial stereotypes stubbornly persist in the face of counterevidence.
A project that began as an "out-take" from this book is my work-in-progress on the global spread of western clock and calendrical time. This article examines the symbolism of western time-keeping in Orokaiva development, where it is reinterpreted through Orokaiva moral assumptions and acquires racial significance as a symbol of "whitemanship."
Another Orokaiva book project, for which I have collected materials and developed ideas, is a historical ethnography of a native prophetic movement that arose among Orokaiva peoples under colonialism. At the center of the Taro Cult were ecstatic trance rituals in which the spirits of personified taro plants inspired prophets with new knowledge, precepts, prohibitions, gardening techniques, dances, and rituals. Taro Cult prophecy responded to Orokaiva people's new experience of colonialism by revitalizing tradition while simultaneously offering a "veiled" discourse that covertly expressed interpretations of the situation of colonial domination in terms that opened up novel possibilities for pan-Orokaiva community and identity. The book, which I am calling The Taro Cult: Prophecy and Power in Colonial Papua, engages scholarly debates over the politics of popular religious movements involving prophecy, spirit possession, and shamanism in colonial situations.
Through my teaching on globalization, I have recently begun a new project on the theoretical implications of the rise of corporate personhood. The corporation, or limited-liability joint-stock company, is the dominant institutional form of our time, with sui generis characteristics that cannot be reduced to the individuals who own, manage, and work for it. Through its public relations and marketing efforts, it powerfully shapes public discourse, normalizing hedonistic conceptions of social relations and contributing to the ideological transformation of the individual from producer to consumer. Indeed, the corporation has become an agent par excellence of cultural production, complicating our conventional view of the relationship between the individual and culture. So a proper understanding of the corporation is essential if we are to improve upon oversimplified producer-consumer (and producer-consumer-nation-state) models of the economy, and this is also a productive and appropriate focus of anthropologists' critical energies, which for too long have been wasted criticizing lesser powers for lesser wrongs.
Another important side of my research is the history of anthropology, which is what initially brought me into the field. Here my special interest is in examining how past anthropologists were perceived by their informants in the field, and how this affected their findings, a kind of study that combines the history of anthropology with historical ethnography. In this vein I've written about the colonial context of David Schneider's fieldwork on Yap (Micronesia) during the U.S. naval colonial administration of the islands after World War II. I am currently working with Lise Dobrin on
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 8, 2017
I still need to go back and reread some parts and make notes for class, but I did genuinely enjoy this book. It's the first ethnography I've read in its entirety and it was very clear, though repetitive at times. It did definitely make me think, and while I didn't agree with everything Bashkow said, I'm very glad I read this and I might even try and find some of his other works when I have time.
October 22, 2023
Bashkow was lowkey a baddie for this🤓
February 4, 2020
Tenttikirja-materiaalia siitä paremmasta päästä. Kirjan keskiössä on kysymys siitä miten Papua Uuden Guinean Orokaivat näkevät valkoiset suhteessa itsensää. Kirjan pääargumentti on kahtalainen.
Ensinnäkin Bashkow'n mukaan käsitykset "toisesta" kertovat aina pääasiassa kulttuurista, jossa ne on luotu. Esimerkiksi Orokaivat käyttävät "whitemen"-kategoriaa verrokkina sekä silloin kuin haluavat puhua omista moraalista puutteistaan (kuten yhteistyön ongelmat, kehityksen puute) että silloin kuin haluavat korostaa omaa paremmuutaan (esimerkiksi toisista huolehtimisessa). Hänen mukaansa tälläinen toiseuden käyttäminen on kulttuurien kovassa ytimessä, eikä se ole vain ja ainoastaan huono asia.
Toisenakin Bashkow argumentoi kenttätyönsä pohjalta sen puolesta, että "toista" koskevat stereotypiat (kuten rasistiset mielipiteet) rakentuvat pääasiassa yhteydestä tiettyihin esineisiin, instituutioihin ja käyttäytymismalleihin. Bashkow'n mukaan oikeilla kokemuksilla tietyn kategorian edustajista on hyvin vähän väliä näiden stereotypioiden purkamisessa. Esimerkiksi Bashkow'n mukaan oli täysin yhdentekevää, että hän kertoi etteivät valkoiset Yhdysvalloissa syö pääasiassa riisiä ja purkkilihaa, koska kyse oli uskomuksesta joka koski ruokaa, ei niinkään amerikkalaisia itsessään. Bashkow'n mukaan ei myöskään ole olemassa yhtä tiettyä "avainuskomusta" jonka poistamalla esimerkiksi rasismi voitaisiin poistaa.
(Bashkow itse ajattelee, että poliittisesti meidän tulisi siis keskittyä erityisesti taloudellisen epätasa-arvon poistamiseen, jotta kulttuuri voi sitten tehdä tehtävänsä ja "ratkaista" rasismin ongelman)
Ensinnäkin Bashkow'n mukaan käsitykset "toisesta" kertovat aina pääasiassa kulttuurista, jossa ne on luotu. Esimerkiksi Orokaivat käyttävät "whitemen"-kategoriaa verrokkina sekä silloin kuin haluavat puhua omista moraalista puutteistaan (kuten yhteistyön ongelmat, kehityksen puute) että silloin kuin haluavat korostaa omaa paremmuutaan (esimerkiksi toisista huolehtimisessa). Hänen mukaansa tälläinen toiseuden käyttäminen on kulttuurien kovassa ytimessä, eikä se ole vain ja ainoastaan huono asia.
Toisenakin Bashkow argumentoi kenttätyönsä pohjalta sen puolesta, että "toista" koskevat stereotypiat (kuten rasistiset mielipiteet) rakentuvat pääasiassa yhteydestä tiettyihin esineisiin, instituutioihin ja käyttäytymismalleihin. Bashkow'n mukaan oikeilla kokemuksilla tietyn kategorian edustajista on hyvin vähän väliä näiden stereotypioiden purkamisessa. Esimerkiksi Bashkow'n mukaan oli täysin yhdentekevää, että hän kertoi etteivät valkoiset Yhdysvalloissa syö pääasiassa riisiä ja purkkilihaa, koska kyse oli uskomuksesta joka koski ruokaa, ei niinkään amerikkalaisia itsessään. Bashkow'n mukaan ei myöskään ole olemassa yhtä tiettyä "avainuskomusta" jonka poistamalla esimerkiksi rasismi voitaisiin poistaa.
(Bashkow itse ajattelee, että poliittisesti meidän tulisi siis keskittyä erityisesti taloudellisen epätasa-arvon poistamiseen, jotta kulttuuri voi sitten tehdä tehtävänsä ja "ratkaista" rasismin ongelman)
March 20, 2025
Very interesting read, well written and easy to understand
May 22, 2026
read for school. interesting though ethnology is not my first grab over theory for anthropology
January 6, 2013
A very well-written ethnography of the Orokaiva people of PNG. A unique take on ethnography as such, with insightful arguments on post-colonialism, race, 'the other' and whiteness.
Bashkow criticises Said and other scholars since ‘Orientalism’ who have argued that construing others as culturally distinct is harmful if it perpetuates their exclusion from the category identified with the West. Bashkow argues that scholars are often quick to dismiss foreign discourses of otherness that are considered mere internalisations of hegemonic Western ideology cultivated through colonialism. Instead, he makes the persuasive argument that othering is not something specific to Western Orientalists, and is not inherently an instrument of domination. Bashkow's ethnographic work is useful for thinking about conceptual binary of self and other.
Bashkow criticises Said and other scholars since ‘Orientalism’ who have argued that construing others as culturally distinct is harmful if it perpetuates their exclusion from the category identified with the West. Bashkow argues that scholars are often quick to dismiss foreign discourses of otherness that are considered mere internalisations of hegemonic Western ideology cultivated through colonialism. Instead, he makes the persuasive argument that othering is not something specific to Western Orientalists, and is not inherently an instrument of domination. Bashkow's ethnographic work is useful for thinking about conceptual binary of self and other.
September 9, 2009
I've only read half of the book for time's sake, but if time weren't an issue, I would certainly read more. This held me throughout and constantly had me thinking about parallels to my own race-related work in the United States on totally different topics - the mark of deep and widely applicable writing.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews