John Barker

  • Professor
  • Department Head, Anthropology
  • john.barker(at)ubc.ca
  • (604) 822-3160 (AnSo 2129)
  • Ph.D. University of British Columbia, 1985

Personal webpage: faculty.arts.ubc.ca/barker/

Research Interests

My research has focused mainly on the interface between local and global religion, with forays into the history of Canadian anthropology, ethno-history, the anthropology of art and the impact of international environmental organizations upon indigenous peoples. Since 1981, I have conducted most of my field research with the Maisin people of Papua New Guinea, a socio-linguistic group of around 3,000 people living in Oro Province on the northeast coast of the country. I have also had shorter stints of fieldwork with the Nuxalk and Nisga'a Nations of British Columbia. Most of my work concerns the place of Christianity in Oceania and Aboriginal British Columbia, during the colonial period and in the present.

Books & Edited Collections

  • 2008. Ancestral Lines: The Maisin of Papua New Guinea and the Fate of the Rainforest. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
  • (ed.). 2007. The Anthropology of Morality in Melanesia and Beyond. Aldershot: Ashgate.
  • Barker, John and Alan Howard (eds.). 2004 [2007]. Back in the Field Again: Long Term Fieldwork in Oceanic Societies. Pacific Studies 27 (3/4).
  • Barker, John and Douglas Cole (eds.) 2003. At Home with the Bella Coola Indians: T.F. McIlwraith's Field Letters, 1922-24. Vancouver: UBC Press.
  • Barker John and Dan Jorgensen (eds.) 1996. Regional Histories in Oceania. Oceania 66:3.
  • (ed.) 1990. Christianity in Oceania: Ethnographic Perspectives. ASAO Monograph No. 12. Lanham, New York and London: University Press of America.

Journal Articles

  • 2004 (2007). "Films and Other Trials: Reflections on Fieldwork among the Maisin, Papua New Guinea," Pacific Studies 27(3/4): 81-106.
  • 2003. "Christian Bodies: The Dialectics of Sickness and Salvation among the Maisin of Papua New Guinea," Journal of the Religious History 27(3):272-292.
  • 2001. "Dangerous Objects: Changing Indigenous Perceptions of Material Culture in a Papua New Guinea Society," Pacific Science 55(4): 359-75, 2001.
  • 1998. "Tangled Reconciliations: The Anglican Church and the Nisga'a of British Columbia," American Ethnologist 25(3):433-451.
  • 1996. "Village Inventions: Historical Variations upon a Regional Theme in Uiaku, Papa New Guinea," Oceania 66(3):211-29.
  • Barker, John and Anne Marie Tietjen. 1990. Female Facial Tattooing among the Maisin of Oro Province, Papua New Guinea: The Changing Significance of an Ancient Custom," Oceania 60(3)217-34.

Book Chapters

  • 2007. "Taking Sides: The Post-Colonial Triangle in Uiaku." In The Anthropology of Morality in Melanesia and Beyond, pp. 75-91.
  • 2006. "Modalities of Modernity in Maisin Society." In Sandra Bamford (ed.), Embodying Modernity and Post-Modernity: Ritual, Praxis and Social Change in Melanesia, pp. 179-232. Durham: Carolina Academic Press.
  • 2005. "Where the Missionary Frontier Ran Ahead of Empire." In Norman Etherington (ed.), Missions and Empire (Companion Series to The Oxford History of the British Empire), pp. 86-106. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • 2005. "An Outpost in Papua: Anglican Missionaries and Melanesian Teachers among the Maisin, 1902-1934." In Peggy Brock (ed.), Indigenous Peoples and Religious Change, pp. 79-106. Leiden: Brill.
  • 2005. "Kawo and Sabu: Perceptions of Traditional Leadership among the Maisin of Papua New Guinea." In Claudia Gross, Harriet D. Lyons and Dorothy A. Counts (eds.), A Polymath Anthropologist: Essays in Honour of Ann Chowning. Research in Anthropology and Linguistics, Monograph No. 6, pp. 131-137. Auckland: University of Auckland.
  • 2004. "Creationism in Canada." In Simon Coleman and Leslie Carlin (eds.), The Cultures of Creationism: Political, Educational and Religious Aspects of a Global Phenomenon, pp. 85-108. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.
  • 2004. "Between Heaven and Earth: Missionaries, Environmentalists and the Maisin." In Victoria Lockwood (ed.), Globalization and Culture Change in the Pacific Islands, pp. 439-59. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.
  • 1999. "Oceanic Religion." In Moshe Rapaport (ed.), The Pacific Islands: A Geography, pp. 234-45. Honolulu: Bess Press.
  • 1993. "We are 'Ekelesia': Conversion in Uiaku, Papua New Guinea." In Robert Hefner (ed.), Christian Conversion, pp. 199-230. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • 1992. "Christianity in Western Melanesian Ethnography." In James Carrier (ed.), History and Tradition in Melanesian Anthropology, pp. 144-73. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • 1992. "Introduction: T.F. McIlwraith among the Nuxalk (Bella Coola Indians)." In T.F. McIlwraith, The Bella Coola Indians, pp. is-xxxvii. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
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