Changing contexts, shifting meanings : transformations of cultural traditions in Oceania / Elfriede Hermann.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Hermann, Elfriede, editor.

Honolulu Academy of Arts, associated with work.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Pacific Islanders--Congresses.

Pacific Islanders.

Social change--Oceania--Congresses.

Social change.

Oceania--Civilization--Congresses.

Oceania.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (512 pages)

Place of Publication:

Honolulu : University of Hawaii Press, [2011]

Language Note:

English

System Details:

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Summary:

This book sheds new light on processes of cultural transformation at work in Oceania and analyzes them as products of interrelationships between culturally created meanings and specific contexts. In a series of inspiring essays, noted scholars of the region examine these interrelationships for insight into how cultural traditions are shaped on an ongoing basis.The collection marks a turning point in the debate on the conceptualization of tradition. Following a critique of how tradition has been viewed in terms of dichotomies like authenticity vs. inauthenticity, contributors stake out a novel perspective in which tradition figures as context-bound articulation. This makes it possible to view cultural traditions as resulting from interactions between people-their ideas, actions, and objects-and the ambient contexts. Such interactions are analyzed from the past down to the Oceanian present-with indigenous agency being highlighted. The work focuses first on early encounters, initially between Pacific Islanders themselves and later with the European navigators of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, to clarify how meaningful actions and contexts interrelated in the past. The present-day memories of Pacific Islanders are examined to ask how such memories represent encounters that occurred long ago and how they influenced the social, political, economic, and religious changes that ensued. Next, contributors address ongoing social and structural interactions that social actors enlist to shape their traditions within the context of globalization and then the repercussions that these intersections and intercultural exchanges of discourses and practices are having on active identity formation as practiced by Pacific Islanders. Finally, two authorities on Oceania-who themselves move in the intersecting space between anthropology and history-discuss the essays and add their own valuable reflections.With its wealth of illuminating analyses and illustrations, Changing Contexts, Shifting Meanings will appeal to students and scholars in the fields of cultural and social anthropology, history, art history, museology, Pacific studies, gender studies, cultural studies, and literary criticism.Contributors: Aletta Biersack, Françoise Douaire-Marsaudon, Bronwen Douglas, David Hanlon, Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin, Peter Hempenstall, Margaret Jolly, Miriam Kahn, Martha Kaplan, John D. Kelly, Wolfgang Kempf, Gundolf Krüger, Jacquelyn Lewis-Harris, Lamont Lindstrom, Karen Nero, Ton Otto, Anne Salmond, Serge Tcherkézoff, Paul van der Grijp, Toon van Meijl.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Foreword / Little, Stephen

Acknowledgments

Introduction. Engaging with Interactions: Traditions as Context-Bound Articulations / Hermann, Elfriede

Changing Contexts, Shifting Meanings: The Cook /Forster Collection, for Example / Hauser-Schäublin, Brigitta

Part I. Early Encounters

Histories of the BeforeL Lelu, Nan Madol, and Deep Time / Hanlon, David

Beyond the Beach? Re-articulating the Limen in Oceanic Pasts, Presents, and Futures / Jolly, Margaret

Encountering Agency: Islanders, European Voyagers, and the Production of Race in Oceania / Douglas, Bronwen

Aphrodite's Island: Sexual Mythologies in Early Contact Tahiti / Salmond, Anne

An Encounter with Violence in Paradise: Georg Forster's Reflections on War in Aotearoa, Tahiti, and Tonga (1772 -1775) / Krüger, Gundolf

Inventing Polynesia / Tcherkézoff, Serge

Part II. Memories

Naming and Memory on Tanna, Vanuatu / Lindstrom, Lamont

Inventing Traditions and Remembering the Past in Manus / Otto, Ton

Social Mimesis, Commemoration, and Ethnic Performance: Fiji Banaban Representations of the Past / Kempf, Wolfgang

Part III. Global and (Trans)local Processes

Moving onto the Stage: Tourism and the Transformation of Tahitian Dance / Kahn, Miriam

Producing Inalienable Objects in a Global Market: The Solien Besena in Contemporary Australia / Lewis-Harris, Jacquelyn A.

Alienation and Appropriation: Fijian Water and the Pacific Romance in Fiji and New York / Kaplan, Martha

Shanti and Mana: The Loss and Recovery of Culture under Postcolonial Conditions in Fiji / Kelly, John D.

Justice in Wallis-'Uvea: Customary Rights and Republican Law in a French Overseas Territory / Douaire-Marsaudon, Françoise

Part IV. Cultural Exchange and Identities

Maori Traditions in Analogy with the Past / Meijl, Toon van

Contemporary Tongan Artists and the Reshaping of Oceanic Identity / Grijp, Paul van der

A Tale of Three Time Travelers: Maintaining Relationships, Exploring Visual Technologies / Nero, Karen L.

Cultural Change in Oceania: Remembering the Historical Questions / Hempenstall, Peter

Epilogue / Biersack, Aletta

Contributors

Index

Notes:

Papers from a symposium sponsored by the Honolulu Academy of Arts, held Feb. 23-26, 2006, in conjunction with the exhibition Life in the Pacific of the 1700s.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 28. Aug 2019)

ISBN:

9780824870355

0824870352

9780824860141

0824860144

OCLC:

794925331