NEW GUINEA RELIGIONS [FIRST EDITION]. Any summary of traditional religions in New Guinea must address itself to two issues: the people's subjective view of the phenomena, and outside observers' arbitrary definitions of them, which are often at odds with each other. Melanesians as a whole appear to have no collective term for religion as a separate cultural category in their own languages, so that it is difficult to specify the limits of inquiry. In their eyes, however important to them, "religion" is merely one facet of their generalized sociocultural system. The foreign observer has to select and concentrate on those features that most closely resemble religion in his own society. It must also be asked what the foreign observer's most appropriate approach to the study of religion would be. During the last hundred-odd years anthropology has been rich in definitions...