Product details
- ISBN 9780857454980
- Format: Hardback
- Weight: 499g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 01 Jun 2012
- Publisher: Berghahn Books
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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Many anthropological accounts of warfare in indigenous societies have described the taking of heads or other body parts as trophies. But almost nothing is known of the prevalence of trophy-taking of this sort in the armed forces of contemporary nation-states. This book is a history of this type of misconduct among military personnel over the past two centuries, exploring its close connections with colonialism, scientific collecting and concepts of race, and how it is a model for violent power relationships between groups.
Simon Harrison is Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Ulster and has carried out ethnographic fieldwork among the people of Avatip in Papua New Guinea. He is the author of, among other works, The Mask of War (Manchester University Press, 1993) and Fracturing Resemblances: Identity and Mimetic Conflict in Melanesia and the West (Berghahn Books, 2005).
