Culture Contact in the Pacific

Culture Contact in the Pacific
Author: Max Quanchi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 208
Release: 1993-03-22
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780521422840

The authors have brought together a collection of works from specialists in Pacific History from across Australia and throughout the Pacific. The individual contributions were specifically written to meet the needs of senior history courses in Australia. Max Quanchi and Ron Adams are well-known educationists who have specialised in the pacific. They have extensively travelled and studied in the Pacific and have spent many years teaching history to secondary and fertiary students. The result is an authoritative text for all senior History and Australian Studies students who need to understand the Pacific region.

On the Road of the Winds

On the Road of the Winds
Author: Patrick Vinton Kirch
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 448
Release: 2002-03-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520234618

Providing a synthesis of archaeological and historical anthropological knowledge of the indigenous cultures of the Pacific islands, this text focuses on human ecology and island adaptations.

Native Cultures of the Pacific Islands

Native Cultures of the Pacific Islands
Author: Douglas L. Oliver
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 188
Release: 1989-01-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780824811822

Even before Western contact, the Pacific Islanders inhabited nearly every island north and east of Australia - a thousand distinctive peoples. This overview of the cultures of the Pacific Islands treats their physical setting, prehistory, activities, and social relations before European influences subjected them to radical changes. It is intended mainly for college-level students in courses dealing with the region, but Native Cultures of the Pacific Islands will also be enjoyed by those interested in the Pacific Islands and by visitors to the Pacific. The book is an abridgement of the author’s larger, two-volume work, Oceania: The Native Cultures of Australia and the Pacific Islands. Native Cultures of the Pacific Islands contains a number of maps and illustrations from the larger work.

Cultural Contact and the Making of European Art since the Age of Exploration

Cultural Contact and the Making of European Art since the Age of Exploration
Author: Mary D. Sheriff
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2010-06-21
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0807898198

Art historians have long been accustomed to thinking about art and artists in terms of national traditions. This volume takes a different approach, suggesting instead that a history of art based on national divisions often obscures the processes of cultural appropriation and global exchange that shaped the visual arts of Europe in fundamental ways between 1492 and the early twentieth century. Essays here analyze distinct zones of contact--between various European states, between Asia and Europe, or between Europe and so-called primitive cultures in Africa, the Americas, and the South Pacific--focusing mainly but not exclusively on painting, drawing, or the decorative arts. Each case foregrounds the centrality of international borrowings or colonial appropriations and counters conceptions of European art as a "pure" tradition uninfluenced by the artistic forms of other cultures. The contributors analyze the social, cultural, commercial, and political conditions of cultural contact--including tourism, colonialism, religious pilgrimage, trade missions, and scientific voyages--that enabled these exchanges well before the modern age of globalization. Contributors: Claire Farago, University of Colorado at Boulder Elisabeth A. Fraser, University of South Florida Julie Hochstrasser, University of Iowa Christopher Johns, Vanderbilt University Carol Mavor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Mary D. Sheriff, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Lyneise E. Williams, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Culture and History in the Pacific

Culture and History in the Pacific
Author: Jukka Siikala
Publisher: Helsinki University Press
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2021-09-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9523690477

Culture 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.

God Is Samoan

God Is Samoan
Author: Matt Tomlinson
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2020-03-31
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0824880978

Christian theologians in the Pacific Islands see culture as the grounds on which one understands God. In this pathbreaking book, Matt Tomlinson engages in an anthropological conversation with the work of “contextual theologians,” exploring how the combination of Pacific Islands culture and Christianity shapes theological dialogues. Employing both scholarly research and ethnographic fieldwork, the author addresses a range of topics: from radical criticisms of biblical stories as inappropriate for Pacific audiences to celebrations of traditional gods such as Tagaloa as inherently Christian figures. This book presents a symphony of voices—engaged, critical, prophetic—from the contemporary Pacific’s leading religious thinkers and suggests how their work articulates with broad social transformations in the region. Each chapter in this book focuses on a distinct type of culturally driven theological dialogue. One type is between readers and texts, in which biblical scholars suggest new ways of reading, and even rewriting, the Bible so it becomes more meaningful in local terms. A second kind concerns the state of the church and society. For example, feminist theologians and those calling for “prophetic” action on social problems propose new conversations about how people in Oceania should navigate difficult times. A third kind of discussion revolves around identity, emphasizing what makes Oceania unique and culturally coherent. A fourth addresses the problems of climate change and environmental degradation to sacred lands by encouraging “eco-theological” awareness and interconnection. Finally, many contextual theologians engage with the work of other disciplines— prominently, anthropology—as they develop new discourse on God, people, and the future of Oceania. Contextual theology allows people in Oceania to speak with God and fellow humans through the idiom of culture in a distinctly Pacific way. Tomlinson concludes, however, that the most fruitful topic of dialogue might not be culture, but rather the nature of dialogue itself. Written in an accessible, engaging style and presenting innovative findings, this book will interest students and scholars of anthropology, world religion, theology, globalization, and Pacific studies.

Voyages and Beaches

Voyages and Beaches
Author: Alex Calder
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 353
Release: 1999-04-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0824865510

What actually happened as Europeans and peoples of the Pacific discovered each other? How have their respective senses of the past influenced their understanding of the present? And what are the consequences of their meeting? In this collection of essays, scholars from European, Polynesian, and Settler backgrounds provide answers to these questions. Writing from, and between, a variety of disciplines (history, anthropology, Maori Studies, literary criticism, law, cultural studies, art history, Pacific Studies), they show how the Pacific reveals a more various and contradictory history than that supposed by such homogenizing metropolitan myths as the introduction of civilization to savage peoples, the general ruin of indigenous cultures by an imperial juggernaut, or the mimicry of European models by an abject population. They examine contact from both sides of beaches throughout Polynesia, exposing the many inconsistencies from which Pacific history is made. Some of the essays consider the extent to which traditional European ideas about organizing and legitimizing claims to territory and power were invoked and problematized in the South Pacific; some consider the violence endemic in such scenes; others examine the aesthetic discourses with which early travelers and settlers attempted to make sense of the Pacific in the aftermath of "discovery." But rather than reiterate the myths and anti-myths of conquest, these essays show how local differences have made and do make a difference. They emphasize the Pacific's capacity to absorb and transform the impact of Europe, an impact that has been as notable for its ambivalence and confusion as for its single-minded pursuit of hegemony. The editors develop these themes in a wide-ranging introduction that relates Pacific concerns to a more global set of theoretical and methodological problems, including current work in post-colonial and subaltern studies.