Jan Pouwer (21 September 1924, Dordrecht – 21 April 2010, Zwolle) was a Dutch anthropologist with a thorough grounding in his profession in terms of fieldwork and theory.
He worked as a ‘government anthropologist’ and conducted extensive fieldwork in Netherlands New Guinea (now Papua region in Indonesia), 1951–62.
Many of his concerns and much of his work can be viewed as a 'text' framed within the 'context' of Leiden Structuralism, itself part of the larger field of modern anthropology.
He enriched this field with insights in configurational comparison and the dialectical character of social structure, mythology, gender and ritual.
His last book, Gender, Ritual and Social Formation in West Papua: A Configurational Analysis Comparing Kamoro and Asmat, was published at Leiden in 2010.
He conducted fieldwork among the Kamoro people in the coastal Mimika-area (South-West New Guinea), 1951–54; undertook a two-months’ survey on social structure, land-tenure, prestige economy and some moot problems of acculturation in the areas surrounding the Ajamaru lakes, Central Bird's Head, West New Guinea, 1956; six months of research into the effects of commercial films on the ideas, values and behavior of urban Papuans, 1956; four months of fieldwork in the rugged highlands of the Northwestern Bird's Head (Anggi lakes and surroundings), mainly among two highly dispersed tribes, 1957; eight months of fieldwork as a member of the Dutch scientific expedition to the Star Mountains (Sterrengebergte) near the border between West New Guinea and Papua, 1959; the Iwur region, south of the Star Mountains; the urban community of Tugunese people (1961), a mixture of Indonesian, Portuguese, Dutch, German and Papuan origin, who left their village near Jakarta in 1950 to settle in Hollandia (now Jayapura) and who were expected to migrate to the Netherlands in 1962.
In the Prologue to his 2010 book, he notes (2010:3) that a request to have the thesis translated into English was unsuccessful and that this reduced access for those with a limited reading knowledge of Dutch.
Shortly before his death, Pouwer concluded a synthetic monograph comparing Kamoro and Asmat culture, based on his own fieldwork, missionary and administrative reports, and anthropological studies (Gender, Ritual and Social Formation in West Papua.
[1] One theme which runs through Pouwer's work, both published and unpublished, is the need for new approaches to understanding the social formations of other peoples.
In his work he was always aware of a dialectical relationship, in terms of systems of significations, between the anthropologist as an observer and the lived realities of other peoples.
(Pouwer 1967:92) He added that, without taking "...the horizontal arrangement into explicit consideration ... the structure of New Guinea systems will not be intelligible to us.
"(ibid) Pouwer's work also demonstrates a consistent attempt to capture, within a strict discipline, something of life's movement.
Other themes range from a review of Dutch New Guinea as an Ethnological Field of Study (1961) to a 'travel guide' to the myths of Kamoro and Asmat peoples (2002).
In the latter, Pouwer brings an anthropological perspective spanning some fifty years to materials collected by others including Dutch missionaries such as Father G. A. Zegwaard.
In place of typologies of cultures or simple comparison of 'elements' Pouwer asserted that a concern for 'relative position' of elements is a fundamental structuralist tenet.
Pouwer's work demonstrated a Leiden FAS concern for socio-cosmic aspects including dualism and First Peoples' (indigenous) cosmology.
Casting various forms of 'descent' as modalities of 'vertical' arrangement (as derived from general structuring principles), he sought to accommodate the 'horizontal' relationships found in New Guinean social life.
6 December 1953 aan het Hoofd van het Kantoor voor Bevolkingszaken te Hollandia, betreffende: de benutting der tweedeling voor de ontwikkeling van der Mimika, Archives Bureau of Native Affairs No.
Honolulu, Hawaii August 18–25, 1965 Publication 1493 National Research Council Academy of Sciences Washington D.C 1967:77-100 (This is an earlier version of the preceding and is available via Google books.)
Mimika Land Tenure New Guinea Research Bulletin 38:24-33 Canberra: Australian National University 1970 Signification and Fieldwork.
The Enigma of the Unfinished Male: An Entry to East Bird's Head Mythology, Irian Jaya Anthropos (Journal) 94:457-486.
Geslachtelijheid en ideologie: toegelicht aan een samenleving van Irian Jaya in T. Lemaire (ed.)
Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 144:523-539 1988 The Leiden Structuralist Tradition: A "French Connection"?
1991:209 The Hidden Flow (review of James Weiner, The Heart of the pearl shell: The mythological dimension of Foi sociology.
1988 Uni of California Press) Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkinde 147:502-508 1991 Fizzy: Fuzzy; FAS?
Nijmegen: Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen, Instituut voor Culturele en Sociale Antropologie; 1989 Sociaal Antropologische Cahiers; v. XXIII Grijp, Paul van der, Ton Lemaire en Albert Trouwborst (eds) Sporen in de antropologie: Liber Amicorum Jan Pouwer.
Hays, Terence E. Encyclopedia of World Cultures, Volume 2:Oceania Boston:Hall Haenen, Paul and Pouwer, Jan (eds) Peoples on the Move: Current Themes of Anthropological Research in New Guinea.
Groningen: Konstapel 1984 Offenberg, Gertrudis A.M and Pouwer, Jan (eds) Amoko in the Beginning: Myths and Legends of the Asmat and Mimika Papuans.
Adelaide: Crawford House Publishing (Australia) 2002 Oosten, Jarich "A Privileged Field of Study:" Marcel Mauss and Structural Anthropology in Leiden.
Etudes/Inuit/Studies, 2006, 30(2):51-71 Ploeg, Anton Pouwer's Field Research in the Star Mountains, West New Guinea Oceania, Vol.