Sydney Studies in Society and Culture

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Anthropology

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Explore critical research and analysis on society and culture from Sydney. Gain insights into social dynamics, cultural trends, and human interactions in a global context.

Sydney Studies in Society and Culture Cover

Articles in this Journal

Towards a General Theory of Conversion

The phenomenon of conversion to Christianity may be approached from many differing viewpoints: as history of missions, as a sociological process, as a personal journey from unbelief to faith, and as an aspect of political and territorial e...

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Christians and Muslims in Syria and Upper Mesopotamia in the Early Arab Islamic Period: Cultural Change and Continuity

This is a preliminary report of research in progress on social and cultural change in early Islamic Syria. Syria is defined here as the historical region covered by modern Syria, south-west Turkey (Antioch province), Lebanon, Jordan and Pa...

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New Evidence for the History of Indigenous Aramaic Christianity in Southern Jordan

Pre-Islamic Southern Jordan has for some time been a much neglected Aramaic-speaking domain in the history of the spread of the early Christian movement as it emerged from its Judaic origins. This is in spite of the large Byzantine site of...

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Rethinking Old Problems: Matriliny, Secret Societies and Political Evolution

MY EARLY INTEREST in the comparative study of male initiation rites and secret societies in Melanesia (Allen 1967) had been in large measure generated through reading the old ethnographies that dealt with the great variety of elaborate mal...

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Procession and Pilgrimage in Newar Religion

MOST VISITORS to Kathmandu valley are immediately impressed by the immense proliferation of physical manifestations of the sacred or divine. As well as the countless temples and shrines dedicated to almost every known deity of both the Hin...

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Buddhism without Monks: The Vajrayana Religion of the Newars ofKathmandu

In this paper I give a brief descriptive outline of the main features of a form of Buddhism still practised amongst the Newars of Nepal in which there has been no organized monasticism for at least the last seven hundred years. I do not pr...

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Kumart or 'Virgin' Worship in Kathmandu Valley

KUMAR! is a goddess who has been a recognized member of the Hindu pantheon for at least 2,500 years. Throughout the long history of her worship she has displayed qualities of a highly ambiguous2 kind: on the one hand, she is literally by n...

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Rank and Leadership in Nduindui, Northern New Hebrides

THE IDEAL MODEL of the Melanesian big-man system of leadership is now well established in anthropological literature and has figured prominently in a number of theoretical and descriptive studies. The defining characteristic of the model i...

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Male Cults Revisited: The Politics of Blood versus Semen

IN 1957, as a fourth-year honours undergraduate at SydneyUniversity, I carried out a library-based study of male initiations inMelanesia, the results of which were subsequently published in1967 in a small book entitled Male Cults and Secre...

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Ritualized Homosexuality, Male Power and Political Organization in North Vanuatu: A Comparative Analysis

THE ISLAND of Malekula, in north Vanuatu, has for long been recognized as a locus classicus for the occurrence of organized male homosexuality. Deacon, who carried out his field researches in 1926, was the first to publish a reasonably det...

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Hierarchy and Complementarity in Newar Society

IN A NUMBER of important areas of Newar social life notions of complementarity and status parity are accorded almost as much weight as are those of hierarchy and inequality.' I here suggest that though the kind of hierarchy that defines re...

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Girls' Pre-Puberty Rites among the Newars of Kathmandu Valley

IN THIS CHAPTER I describe two unusual rites performed by the Newars of Kathmandu Valley; an elaborate two-day ceremony in which a large group of pre-pubertal girls are given in marriage to a non-mortal spouse and the seclusion of girls in...