Becoming Sinners—Christianity and Moral Torment in a Papua New Guinea Society

"A major contribution to the understanding of cultural change by means of a remarkable ethnographic study of a Melanesian Christianity. Robbins is very unusual among his generation in being able to walk the walk of the most trendy Deep Thinkers without having to talk their talk."--Marshall Sahlins, Charles F. Grey Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and of Social Sciences, The University of Chicago

"Robbins's excellence as an ethnographer and theoretician is beautifully demonstrated in his book, Becoming Sinners, a ground-breaking ethnography of the interrelations between competing moral discourses in a context of rapid cultural change. One of the most significant contributions of this manuscript is that Robbins has combined a strong humanities orientation in a work on religion and morality with powerful social science methodology. This book will be a major milestone."--Bambi Schieffelin, author of The Give and Take of Everyday Life: Language Socialization of Kaluli Children

Joel Robbins is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, San Diego. He is coeditor of Money and Modernity: State and Local Currencies in Contemporary Melanesia (1999) and of the journal Anthropological Theory.