Collecting Kamoro: Objects, Encounters and Representation on the Southwest Coast of Papua

The story of ethnographic collecting is one of cross-cultural encounters. This book focuses on collecting encounters in the Kamoro region of Papua from the earliest collections made in 1828 until 2011. Exploring the links between representation and collecting, the author focuses on the creative and pragmatic agency of Kamoro people in these collecting encounters. By considering objects as visualizations of social relations, and as enactments of personal, social or historical narrative, this book combines filling a gap in the literature on Kamoro culture with an interest in broader questions that surround the nature of ethnographic collecting, representation, patronage and objectification.