Public lecture examines the changes in sexual culture in Sambia (Papua New Guinea) over 40 years
The public is invited to a free lecture by noted anthropologist Dr. Gilbert Herdt. His talk, entitled, “From Ritual Sex to Sexual Individuality: Sambia (Papua New Guinea) Sexual Culture Change Over 40 Years” is November 5 at 2:30 pm in the Alex H. MacKinnon Auditorium, room 242 of UPEI’s Don and Marion McDougall Hall.
Dr. Herdt is a founding professor and professor in the graduate program in human sexuality at the California Institute for Integral Studies. He is also emeritus director of the National Sexuality Resource Centre and a professor of sexuality and anthropology at San Francisco State University. Dr. Herdt has an international profile and distinction that spans the United States, Australia, the Pacific Islands, and Western Europe through more than thirty years’ research, teaching, policy and clinical studies. He was a Fulbright Scholar to Australia (1974-78), an individual NIMH Scholar at UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute, and has been the recipient of Guggenheim, NEH, and Rockefeller Foundation fellowships. He has taught at Stanford University, University of Chicago, and San Francisco State University (SFSU). He has held major grants from the NIMH, Spencer Foundation, Ford Foundation, and others. Dr. Herdt founded the Department of Sexuality Studies and the Master of Arts in Human Sexuality Studies at San Francisco State University, the first in the United States. He is the founder of the University of Amsterdam Summer Institute on Sexuality and Culture and SFSU’s Summer Institute on Sexuality, Health and Society (2001-2010). His publications include thirty-five books, monographs, anthologies, and more than one hundred scientific papers. Dr. Herdt continues to conduct fieldwork among the Sambia and is a champion of sexual literacy and human rights in Pacific Island countries.
In his public talk, Dr. Herdt will discuss how in two short generations, the Sambia of Papua New Guinea experienced the most extraordinary transition: from constant warfare and ritual-controlled sexuality to contemporary individual-centered sexual meanings and relationships. Based upon long-term anthropological field work [1974-2010] and a humanistic eye both to detail and the big picture, this study reveals how Sambia sexual socialization and desire were grounded through ritual initiation and male-dominated arranged marriages in traditional warrior life, including prescribed secret homoerotic practices for all males. However, this ancient form of human development fell away in the colonial context of evolving interpersonal and individual norms, subjectivities, and behavioral development as evangelical Christian practice revolutionized gendered and sexual relationships through socio-economic development and primary schooling, thus greatly empowering young women. Today’s Sambia psychosexual reality is actually more complex because of a powerful inter-generational struggle over the meaning of “good” versus “bad” sexual practice. The Sambia have proved themselves resilient as individuals in this historic transformation, even as their traditional sexuality and hegemonic male rituals have not. Ritual sex is now a suppressed history as the Sambia make their way into the dreary marketplace of global 21st century individualism. This transformation among the Sambia raises perennial questions regarding the plasticity and innateness of human nature and culture.
For more information, contact Dr. Jean Mitchell, mjmitchell@upei.ca or Ukrautwurst@upei.ca.
