00422827

open access

Version of Record

The Story of Raga : A Man's Ethnography on His Own Society (IV) : Man and Woman

国際文化学研究 : 神戸大学国際文化学部紀要

24

A31-A63

神戸大学国際文化学部

2005-09

2006-09-12

本文ファイルは、国立情報学研究所CiNiiより提供されたものです。

This is the fourth part of an'experimental ethnography' entitled 'The Story of Raga', which consists of a text written in the language of North Raga by the late Rev. David Tevimule in 1966, with its English translation as well as an introduction showing the data collected during my field research on the same topic. The original title of his Ragan text, which was written in the form of a hand-copied book, is Vevhurin Raga, which means 'The Story of Raga'. It consists of twenty chapters and concerns various aspects of North Raga culture : its origin myth, kin relations, grade-taking system, chiefs, initiation rites, and customs concerning birth, marriage, and death. In this paper, I translate Chapters 10 and 11, in which Rev. David Tevimule describes man-woman relationships in North Raga as well as customs concerning birth. In the introduction, I will discuss the sexual relationship and some of the birth customs in North Raga. The concept of polyphonic description was proposed by Clifford, who insisted that the voice of a native informant should be directly cited in an ethnography, so as not to be extinguished by the monophonic voice of the ethnographer. However, it is difficult for most readers of ethnography to understand the meaning of a native speaking in his or her own language, even if it has been translated literally into the language of the reader, because of conceptual gaps between the two languages. The ethnographer, therefore, should transform the raw information provided by a native in his or her language into an interpreted translation that the reader can understand; however, this process tends to result, ultimately, in a monophonic description on the part of the ethnographer. To avoid inappropriately processing the raw material in this series of papers, I have translated the Ragan text word-for-word into English ; detailed notes supplement the translation, so that the reader can understand the meaning of the literal translation.

translation

紀要論文