a59c0823-db9c-48af-9401-8b26df5eb2fe20260404052306Ubiquity Presstech@ubiquitypress.comRUA Metadata ExporterJukkaSiikalaUniversity of Helsinkihttps://ror.org/040af2s02Culture and History in the Pacific is a collection of essays originally published in 1990. The texts explore from different perspectives the question of culture as a repository of historical information. They also address broader questions of anthropological writing at the time, such as the relationship between anthropologists’ representations and local conceptions. This republication aims to make the book accessible to a wider audience, and in the region it discusses, Oceania. A new introductory essay has been included to contextualize the volume in relation to its historical setting, the end of the Cold War era, and to the present study of the Pacific and indigenous scholarship. The authors of Culture and History in the Pacific include prominent anthropologists of the Pacific, some of whom – Roger Keesing and Marilyn Strathern, to name but two – have also been influential in the anthropology of the late 20th and early 21st century in general.Culture and History in the Pacific is a collection of essays by eminent anthropologists originally published in 1990. The authors represent several academic traditions and different areal discussions during the Cold War era. The texts explore from different perspectives the question of culture as a repository of historical information. They also address broader questions of anthropological writing at the time. This republication aims to make the book accessible to a wider audience, and in the region it discusses, Oceania. A new introductory essay has been included to contextualize the volume in relation to its historical setting and to the present study of the Pacific and indigenous scholarship.09292021978-952-369-046-2978-952-369-047-9Helsinki University PressHelsinkihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/10.33134/HUP-12https://hup.fi/books/e/10.33134/HUP-12https://hup.fi/books/18/files/1f2896b7-f4ce-4f65-b939-5a79e4813912.pdfhttps://hup.fi/books/18/files/1f2896b7-f4ce-4f65-b939-5a79e4813912.pdfTuomasTammistoUniversity of Helsinkihttps://ror.org/040af2s02https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9767-7832HeikkiWileniusUniversity of Helsinkihttps://ror.org/040af2s02https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4601-23920929202110.33134/HUP-12-1https://hup.fi/chapters/e/10.33134/HUP-12-1https://hup.fi/books/18/files/46dfbd69-2d5b-4b65-b5e2-edaa783519d3.pdfPetraAutioUniversity of Helsinkihttps://ror.org/040af2s02Culture and History in the Pacific was first published in 1990 by a small scholarly society in a remote European country. The original edition of the book was not particularly accessible elsewhere, least of all in the region it discusses, Oceania. The volume has now been republished digitally and in open access to ensure with the hope that it will reach a wider audience. The aim of this preface is to place this book into perspective – or rather, some perspectives – in the hope that by contextualizing the book, it is possible for the reader to separate that which has withstood time or is of value to him or her. It will be doing so particularly with reference to the borders and divisions referred to in the original preface but also going beyond them. Firstly, the preface briefly describes one context in which the original papers were presented: the era approaching the end of the Cold War, and its effect on academia in general and anthropology in particular. Secondly, it will comment on a scholarly context within Pacific anthropology which is explicitly present in the book. This is the context of areal discussions, and the division of the Pacific into the culture areas of Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia. Thirdly, it looks at a further framework which is only partly visible in the book, namely the division between an outsider researcher and his or her topic and how this has been challenged and transformed in the decades following the original publication.0929202110.33134/HUP-12-2https://hup.fi/chapters/e/10.33134/HUP-12-2https://hup.fi/books/18/files/63218eaf-68af-4bb7-8c44-5215ded1efa9.pdfJukkaSiikalaUniversity of Helsinkihttps://ror.org/040af2s020929202110.33134/HUP-12-3https://hup.fi/chapters/e/10.33134/HUP-12-3https://hup.fi/books/18/files/fda81879-2626-4604-8c26-0b3b05f922ca.pdfJudithHuntsmanUniversity of Aucklandhttps://ror.org/03b94tp07Antony BramstonHooperUniversity of Aucklandhttps://ror.org/03b94tp07This review article analyses representations of Polynesian pasts, discourses surrounding the concepts of history, culture and tradition, describing historiographical projects of Pacific islanders. The article highlights the complex relationship between oral traditions and written historical accounts, and the politics of representation of these projects.0929202110.33134/HUP-12-4https://hup.fi/chapters/e/10.33134/HUP-12-4https://hup.fi/books/18/files/a77518eb-b4c5-4dfd-a9fe-d871c61fe57f.pdfMarilynStrathernCambridge Universityhttps://ror.org/013meh722https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2004-1902By discussing the reactions of Melanesians to the arrival of Europeans, this article raises some queries against anthropological perceptions of historical process. In evoking Melanesian "images", a set of perceptions is presented, which poses problems for the division of labour between social/cultural anthropologists and those concerned with material culture of the kind that finds its way to museums. The result of the division has been that anthropologists have hidden from themselves possible sources of insight into the processes by which people such as the Melanesian of Papua New Guinea deal with social change, and change themselves.0929202110.33134/HUP-12-5https://hup.fi/chapters/e/10.33134/HUP-12-5https://hup.fi/books/18/files/65f359b9-6d50-43de-ad1e-0c584203265d.pdfValerioValeriUniversity of Chicagohttps://ror.org/024mw5h28This paper treats a well documented case of tension between diarchic and monarchic tendencies — that of ancient Hawaiʻi. The instability of diarchy in Hawaiʻi is contrasted with its stability, until the late eighteenth century, in another Polynesian society, Tonga. These different solutions correlate with the different place that a properly historical representation of kingship — that is one that recognizes discontinuities in time, that does not abolish time by making the present identical to the past — have in the two societies.0929202110.33134/HUP-12-6https://hup.fi/chapters/e/10.33134/HUP-12-6https://hup.fi/books/18/files/b24ecf56-9bb2-49ae-acc4-b995734df219.pdfAlettaBiersackUniversity of Oregonhttps://ror.org/0293rh119This paper examines the dualistic foundations of Tongan kingship by way of exploring the historicity of the Tongan polity. While paramounts allegedly descend "from the sky" and the god or gods living there, they are also kinsmen of the villagers living under them and are appraised as such. Whether by way of reproducing or transforming a political field, the mediation of duality requires human work, a practice and performance of kingship. The word genealogy in the title bears the burden of the entire argument. Referring directly to history, it enters into tension with the patrilineal and structural models of the past. The history to which it refers, in turn, is set in motion by the dual foundations of kingship: idioms and ideologies of divinity but existing in tension with the "leveling forces" of contractual modes of legitimation. My aim is to develop a framework adequate to the task of interpreting the revolution of the 19th century, when Tāufa'āhau, a secondary chief, executed sweeping reforms at once chiefly and populist: he suppressed the Tu'i Tonga title of his superior; created a superordinate one, the royal title of the constitutional monarchy he in part designed; and converted to Christianity. The third monarch of the Tupou dynasty Tāufa'āhau founded, Queen Sālote Tupou III, figures prominently in these pages as an ideologue. In her often veiled and diplomatic disparagement of the leaders of the past, Queen Sālote provides a window upon the genealogical politics this paper addresses.0929202110.33134/HUP-12-7https://hup.fi/chapters/e/10.33134/HUP-12-7https://hup.fi/books/18/files/248c7c6f-92a3-4e04-a5b8-5da00b91ba34.pdfJukkaSiikalaUniversity of Helsinkihttps://ror.org/040af2s02The male bias of the expedition era has left its mark upon the anthropology of Polynesian culture. Until recently the objects of analysis have been almost exclusively the chiefly system and warriorhood, which were ethnocentrically interpreted. However, women were active and central in transmitting high rank and Polynesian history provides examples of women who became important chiefs. The question then arises: what in traditional society explains the prominence some females achieved? As mediators between a bounded structure and what lay beyond it, be it political authority, supranormal spheres, or Western culture-bearers, the female played a decisive role. They also acted as chiefs, sometimes even as warriors. This poses a paradox, for the structural position of women, cosmic in nature, does not allow for female chieftaincy. What is important here is a gendered category and not particular males and females. Thus, whole social groups and islands can be regarded as "warriors" or as "females." Actual women who have historically achieved chieftaincy do so as sociological males, not as females, for, while women are a means to the end of chieftaincy, chieftaincy is still gendered as male. But becoming male for a female is as possible as becoming female is for a male, just add the causative prefix 'aka and act like one.0929202110.33134/HUP-12-8https://hup.fi/chapters/e/10.33134/HUP-12-8https://hup.fi/books/18/files/e96f1e2b-c9b0-4c48-8641-e2637868a6b1.pdfV. A.ShnirelmanRussian Academy of Scienceshttps://ror.org/05qrfxd25https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8469-6583The rise of cognitive anthropology has recently stimulated a growing interest in intercultural variation. Separate social groups and strata endowed with various ranks and statuses already appeared at the dawn of history when the socioeconomic classes were developing. Hence that was also the time when various distinct social subcultures were emerging. Some Soviet scholars conceptually divide culture in two related ways. The first is determined by the principle which claims that each cultural form includes both productive and reproductive activities (technic-technological aspects) and the objectivized results of such activities. The second one has to do with various real cultural forms: production culture, consumption culture, interaction culture (or etiquette), socionormative culture, physical culture, artistic culture and so on. It seems quite evident that the emerging social differentiation affected distinct forms of ethnic culture rather differently. In order to understand this process, an extensive survey of the ethnic cultures of New Guinea, Melanesia and Polynesia has been conducted. The implication of this analysis is that it is necessary to correct some points in the methodology of Melanesian and Polynesian ethnic culture studies, because evidence of ordinary folk culture is inappropriate for the description of elite culture, and vice versa. The marshalled data put the investigation of the social differentiation process in a new perspective, particularly concerning the interpretation of prehistoric cultural frontiers.0929202110.33134/HUP-12-9https://hup.fi/chapters/e/10.33134/HUP-12-9https://hup.fi/books/18/files/398cf89c-33eb-4001-865a-e7de42e973c8.pdfRoger M.KeesingMcGill Universityhttps://ror.org/01pxwe438The kula partners of the Melanesian Massim have been one of anthropology's most compelling and influential and enduring images of Otherness, created both by Malinowski's rhetorical power and the sheer fascination they themselves engender. Malinowski saw in the kula lessons for the social science of his time, as well as popular stereotypes, for example the critique of the ostensibly universal figure of the Homo economicus. While anthropology's fashions have changed, and what there ever was of a "primitive" world has been overturned, engulfed, and obliterated, the fascination of the kula has endured. Indeed, this fascination has been a lure helping to attract further generations of fieldworkers to Malinowski's Trobriands and other islands of the kula "ring." Assessing the new evidence, I will suggest that the emerging picture has important implications not only for our understanding of the region and the phenomenon, but for the way we think about Alterity, about "primitive society", a world that never existed, and about anthropology's Orientalist project of representing radical cultural difference to the West. The new perspectives on Massim exchange exemplify directions in which contemporary anthropology has been moving, and provide some useful insights about where and how it needs now to move.0929202110.33134/HUP-12-10https://hup.fi/chapters/e/10.33134/HUP-12-10https://hup.fi/books/18/files/ad30e8a3-e741-4032-b7bd-87629b8eec2c.pdfJohnLiepUniversity of Copenhagenhttps://ror.org/035b05819One of the most outstanding features of Pacific cultures is their elaborate systems of gift exchange. Through the giving of gifts and countergifts Pacific Islanders affirm friendship, contract alliances and assert or challenge social eminence. The exchange of culturally encoded objects constitutes an entire social and political discourse. This essay explores these aspects of gift exchange in some Pacific exchange systems. I am especially concerned with the circulation of graded valuables in what I call systems of ranked exchange. I argue that in such systems one valuable thing often stands for another as its image. As the association between persons and things as images is intimate this has consequences for our understanding of inalienability. In the critical part of the essay I place inalienability in the broader context of reciprocity. My query is especially with the implicit assumption of equivalence often embedded in this concept. I argue that the idea of equivalence in reciprocity results from a transposition of a commodity model into our understanding. Here the notion of equivalent exchange presupposes a contract between equal, independent individuals. The practices of Pacific exchange systems question this simple model of reciprocity and equivalence. They demonstrate that what takes place is rather the negotiation of the personal status and identity of the participants than the assessment of the equivalence of things.0929202110.33134/HUP-12-11https://hup.fi/chapters/e/10.33134/HUP-12-11https://hup.fi/books/18/files/77a35f75-3e8a-4e66-b9ed-8a1d7c2c3433.pdfDavid RussellLawrenceAustralian National Universityhttps://ror.org/019wvm592This paper concentrates on the material aspects of the interaction between Torres Strait Islanders and the Papuan peoples of the Fly estuary and the southwest coastal region of Papua New Guinea. In spite of the differences in ecology, habitation history and subsistence practices, or perhaps because of them, interaction between peoples of the region has a long history. Such patterns of interaction between linguistic and culturally diverse groups of peoples is well known in the Melanesian region. Historically, one of the most important cultural links between Papuans and Islanders has been regular and sustained contact maintained by voyages in large ocean-going canoes. The interesting aspect of this relationship from an economic point of view has been not only the exchange by canoes, that is, using canoes as a means of exchange, but also exchange in canoes, where the canoe itself has been the principal object of exchange. Exchange relations between Torres Strait Islanders, coastal Papuans and Australian Aboriginal groups at Cape York were facilitated by means of a sophisticated maritime technology and operated within the confines of well established real and fictive kinship ties.0929202110.33134/HUP-12-12https://hup.fi/chapters/e/10.33134/HUP-12-12https://hup.fi/books/18/files/0bf8e0bc-985a-4843-a941-4e2b9b36372c.pdfEija-MaijaKotilainenNational Museum of FinlandArchaeologists, anthropologists and linguists are now in general agreement about the prehistory of the Austronesian-speakers, but most details are still obscure. The Philippines and the eastern part of Indonesia have received very little attention in research into the cultures of the Pacific region and the settling of the area by the Austronesian peoples. Based on ethnographical and linguistic evidence, bark cloth making has generally been regarded as a common feature of early Austronesian culture. Ethnography informs us that bark cloth making was known in large areas of Southeast Asia and Oceania, and also in Africa and Central and South America. The importance and position of bark cloth as part of the culture of the Austronesian people is illustrated by the persistence of its manufacture in many places. In this paper I examine in some detail the bark cloth production of the Kaili-Pamona speakers in Central Sulawesi (Celebes) and discuss how the study of their bark cloth may add to research into the cultural history of the Austronesian peoples. I argue that the vitality and important position of bark cloth as part of the culture of the Austronesian peoples is largely due to its central role in religious rituals and social practices. Thus, it is associated with the most sacred powers which represent the continuity and immortality of the society.0929202110.33134/HUP-12-13https://hup.fi/chapters/e/10.33134/HUP-12-13https://hup.fi/books/18/files/1b1ab69d-4b4d-4213-b4af-bdd3cf462516.pdfHelenReeves LawrenceUniversity of Newcastle (NSW)https://ror.org/01kj2bm70The article analyses the material culture of music performance on Manihiki, northern Cook Islands, and provides a framework within which the material culture may be interpreted in its cultural context. The focus of the paper is the built environment associated with music and dance performance, and the rich and varied types of musical styles heard on Manihiki. According to the argument in the paper, the type of music performance is directly related to the type of place at which the performance is held.0929202110.33134/HUP-12-14https://hup.fi/chapters/e/10.33134/HUP-12-14https://hup.fi/books/18/files/b62e7606-b5ac-4b6f-bce1-fe3b5d16ed7b.pdfGiancarlo M. G.ScodittiUniversity of Urbinohttps://ror.org/04q4kt073When one first looks at the lagimu and tabuya, the two multicoloured prowboards placed symmetrically, like mirror-images of one another, on the ceremonial canoe (masawa) used for the Kula Ring exchanges, one is struck by the delicate visual balance between the graphic signs carved in the surface of the wood. The concept of randomness, in the sense of lack of 'order', as absence of planning, must, one feels sure, have been foreign to the person who carved these two prowboards: his hand and his eye must have been guided by precise rules of composition. In what follows I shall try to identify some of the aesthetic principles which determine these rules of composition and the technique which realizes them on a lagimu and tabuya. My exposition is based, as far as the aesthetic principles are concerned, on a series of conversations with Towitara Buyoyu, regarded as one of the greatest woodcarvers in Milne Bay, and Tonori Kiririyei and Siyakwakwa Teitei. Of these last two the former is a young carver of multicoloured prowboards, and the latter a carver and builder of hulls for ceremonial canoes. The lagimu/tabuya, as a geometrical and abstract schema, is equivalent to an equiangular spiral inscribing a golden or isosceles triangle. It is no coincidence that in the past Kitawans used to build ceremonial canoes called goragora (Nautilus pompilius) and characterized by a lagimu in the form of a large, stylized, Nautilus shell.0929202110.33134/HUP-12-15https://hup.fi/chapters/e/10.33134/HUP-12-15https://hup.fi/books/18/files/102f54bd-58f0-4a91-a30e-9a071fad2c02.pdfN. A.ButinovPeter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera)The article reviews different approaches of deciphering the kohau rongorongo script, and gives various standpoints for further analysis, by arguing that the glyphs represent genealogies and mythological events. A methodology of analysis is proposed and tested by deciphering which glyphs represent which tribe names of Easter Islands. The main argument put forth is that the question of whether kohau rongorongo is a mnemonic tool or a phonetic script is a false dichotomy – it can be both.0929202110.33134/HUP-12-16https://hup.fi/chapters/e/10.33134/HUP-12-16https://hup.fi/books/18/files/e358cfc7-72fe-499f-8c7e-eb294e9daab4.pdf