Sala'ilua, a Samoan mystery

the long version

"Beginning with the murder of a village chief--and its aftermath--Bradd Shore moves gradually and deeply into Samoan culture to examine complex power relations in the village, systems of social control, conceptions of the person and of good and evil that help to explain why one man was killed, another banished, and an uneasy peace eventually resolved. This classical ethnography cast as an anthropological murder mystery is the first full-scale study of Samoa since Margaret Mead's pioneering works of the twenties."--Back cover.