Mangrove Man: Dialogics of Culture in the Sepik EstuaryThe Murik of Papua New Guinea conceptualize women as the source of nurture, generosity and love. Men have political power, but their claim to sustain and reproduce society requires them to appropriate the nurturant qualities of women. So they must, in some sense, model certain aspects of themselves after women. A maternal schema or poetics of the female body, which underlines Murik sociocultural patterns, expresses itself in a range of societal