Ian Downs Dead
by Alex
Wow, according to exkiap.net it looks like Ian Downs died 24 August 2003 at the age of 89. He was an important and interesting figure in Papua New Guinea’s history, and particularly in the history of Eastern Highlands and will be missed. His papers are at the National Library of Australia.
[...] The Asaro Valley was where the first great ethnographer of highland New Guinea did his research—Kenneth Read. More than a few ‘classics’ (either essays or books) have been sited there or very close by, including Finney’s Bigmen and Business and Lorraine Sexton’s Mothers of Money, Daughters of Coffee. (Sexton’s work on women’s agency subsequently became an important ethnographic counternote to Read’s emphasis on male solidarity, and figured prominently in Marilyn Strathern’s later critique of Durkheimian paradigms as applied to Melanesian sociality.) The legendary planter and kiap Ian Downs lived in the valley for many years. Folks like Paige West and Pascale Bonnemère. [...]