Nigel Barley

Notes from a Mud Hut

The Innocent Anthropologist

Notas Desde Una Choza De Barro / Notes from a Mud Hut

El antroplogo inocente / The Innocent Anthropologist

In 1985, Dr. Nigel Barley, senior anthropologist at The British Museum, set off for the relatively unknown Indonesian island of Sulawesi in search of the Toraja, a people whose culture includes headhunting, transvestite priests and the massacre of buffalo. In witty and finely crafted prose, Barley offers fascinating insight into the people of Sulawesi and he recounts the tale of the four Torajan woodcarvers he invites back to London to construct an Indonesian rice barn in The British Museum. Previously published as "Not a Hazardous Sport".

Misadventures of a Social Anthropologist in Sulawesi, Indonesia

Toraja

Anybody who has travelled to Bali will be familiar with Balinese-style paintings and the famous Ramayana Monkey dance. In fact both of these art forms were developed by Bali's most famous expat resident: Walter Spies. In the 1920s and 30s, Walter Spies - ethnographer, choreographer, film maker, natural historian and painter - transformed the perception of Bali from that of a remote island to become the site for Western fantasies about Paradise and it underwent an influx of foreign visitors. The rich and famous flocked to Spies house in Ubud and his life and work forged a link between serious academics and the visionaries from the Golden Age of Hollywood.Charlie Chaplin, Noel Coward, Miguel Covarrubias, Vicki Baum, Barbara Hutton and many others sought to experience the vision Spies offered while Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, the foremost anthropologists of their day, attempted to capture the secret of this tantalising and enigmatic culture. Island of Demons is a fascinating and humorous historical novel about the flamboyant and homosexual life of Walter Spies in Bali.

Island of Demons

Sir Stamford Raffles was a British colonial trader who, in 1819, founded the island city-state of Singapore. Today, Singapore is a world alpha city ranked alongside London, New York, and Tokyo. In this intriguing book - part history, part travelogue - the author revisits the places that were important in the life of Raffles and evaluates his legacy, both good and bad, in present-day Singapore. Previously published by Penguin, this is a fully updated edition.

In the Footsteps of Stamford Raffles

Malcolm McLeod

A man stands trial for a brutal murder, a crucial witness disappears, an MP's daughter confronts a dark family secret and an Asian assassin with a passion for Tom and Jerry cartoons inflicts hideous deaths on those who cannot answer his single question. Welcome to the world of Hatewave where the World Wide Web harnesses hate to bring death and destruction to its chosen targets.

Hatewave

Nigel Barley travels to Sulawesi in Indonesia to live among the Torajan people, known for their spectacular buildings and elaborate ancestor cults. At last he is following his own advice to students, to do their anthropological fieldwork 'somewhere where the inhabitants are beautiful, friendly, where you would like the food.' Barley explores the island on horseback and in buses jammed to the gunnels, and meets priests faithful to the old animist rituals. With his customary wit, he takes the reader deep into this complex but adaptable society. Reversing the habitual patterns of anthropology, Barley then invites four Torajan carvers to London to build a traditional rice barn at the Museum of Mankind. The observer becomes the observed. Now, it is Barley's turn to explain the absurdities of an English city to his bemused guests, in a glorious finale to a trilogy of anthropological journeys that began with The Innocent Anthropologist and continued with A Plague of Caterpillars (both published by Eland). A postscript, penned thirty years after these adventures had been concluded, confirms the rich arc of this story-line of role reversals.

Misadventures of an Anthropologist in Indonesia

Not a Hazardous Sport

Stanislaus Sandaruppa

A study of the Torajan ricebarn, a traditional Indonesian structure where the rice crop is stored, and where the main social life of the village takes place. This paper was stimulated by the construction of a ricebarn for the Museum of Mankind at the British Museum in 1987.

The Torajan Ricebarn

When local contacts tipped off Nigel Barley that the Dowayo circumcision ceremony was about to take place, he immediately left London for the village in northern Cameroon where he had lived as a field anthropologist for 18 months. The Dowayos are a mountain people that perform their elaborate, fascinating and fearsome ceremony at six or seven year intervals. It was an opportunity that was too good to miss, a key moment to test the balance of tradition and modernity. Yet, like much else in this hilarious book - the circumcision ceremony was to prove frustratingly elusive.This very failure, compounded by the plague of caterpillars of the book's title allows Nigel Barley to concentrate on everyday life in Dowayoland and the tattered remnants of an overripe French colonial legacy. In the meantime, witchcraft fills the Cameroonian air, a man is lied to by his own foot and an earnest German traveller shows explicit birth-control propaganda to the respectable tribespeople. Beneath the joy and shared laughter in this comic masterpiece lies skilful and wise reflection on the problems facing people of different cultures as they try to understand one another. A Plague of Caterpillars is the second in Barley's trilogy of anthropological journeys that began with The Innocent Anthropologist and ended with Not A Hazardous Sport (all published by Eland).

A Return to the African Bush

A Plague of Caterpillars

Für Ethnologen gibt es heute nicht mehr viel zu entdecken. Umso erfreuter war Nigel Barley, dass bei den Dowayos eine seltene, noch nie von Weißen beobachtete Beschneidungszeremonie stattfinden sollte. Also machte er sich auf nach Kamerun – und dieses Buch, eher Reisebericht als Sachbuch, ist sein Protokoll eines großen Scheiterns. Es macht klar, welch riesige Lücke zwischen den Träumen von der heilen Welt der "Primitiven" und der alltäglichen Wirklichkeit klafft. Keine fröhliche, aber eine unfreiwillig komische Wissenschaft wird hier betrieben. Ehrlicher und amüsanter hat wohl noch kein Ethnologe von seinem Tun und Treiben berichtet.

Von einem, der auszog, Ethnologie zu betreiben

Die Raupenplage

The author, an anthropologist, describes his experiences in Indonesia, and offers his humorous observations on the human condition.

bei den Toraja in Indonesien

Hallo Mister Puttymann

Uno sport poco pericoloso

In 1942 Japanese-occupied Singapore, where violence and starvation stalk the streets, a bizarre tranquillity reigns between warring nations in the Singapore Botanic Gardens. This sensitive and humorous work of historical fiction explores a real, and complicated, chapter of Singapore's history in which British scientists avoided jail during WWII and worked with their Japanese counterparts in the pursuit of science, only to be accused of collaboration following the War.

Love and War in Singapore under the Japanese flag

The Devil's Garden

Describes the misadventures of a novice anthropologist trying to study the culture of the Dowayo people of the Cameroons

An Innocent Anthropologist Abroad

Adventures in a Mud Hut

No es un deporte de riesgo

Many men dream of running away to a tropical island and living surrounded by beauty and exotic exuberance. Walter Spies did more than dream. He actually did it. In the 1920s and 30s, Walter Spies — ethnographer, choreographer, film maker, natural historian and painter — transformed the perception of Bali from that of a remote island to become the site for Western fantasies about Paradise and it underwent an influx of foreign visitors. The rich and famous flocked to Spies’ house in Ubud and his life and work forged a link between serious academics and the visionaries from the Golden Age of Hollywood. Charlie Chaplin, Noel Coward, Miguel Covarrubias, Vicki Baum, Barbara Hutton and many others sought to experience the vision Spies offered while Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, the foremost anthropologists of their day, attempted to capture the secret of this tantalizing and enigmatic culture. Island of Demons is a fascinating historical novel, mixing anthropology, the history of ideas and humour. It offers a unique insight into that complex and multi-hued world that was so soon to be swept away, exploring both its ideas and the larger than life characters that inhabited it.

Nigel Barley

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