New and Old Worlds: A Perspective from Social Anthropology

People build bridges in many ways, and not least over time, spanning the different epochs that define their lives. For social anthropologists, this process is far from self-evident. Diverse ways of thinking about transitions summon anthropology’s traditional mode of making bridges, cross-cultural comparison. This account thus interweaves materials from Europe and Melanesia. Stimulated by an ethnography of an East German town being precipitated into a new world, it focuses on abrupt transitions and their recurrence. What is happening when a radical break with one kind of past is also recalled as looking forward to a moment when another kind of past might finally come into its own? Pursuing such paradoxes, the article turns to today’s Papua New Guinea where many have seen colonialism – like socialism – come and go in a lifetime. People’s aspirations for the future, raising questions about the abruptness of breaks and the crisis that new times create, throw out challenges as to how to envisage worlds old and new.