Culture and History in the Pacific最新文献

The ‘golden section’ on Kitawa Island 北川岛的“黄金分割”

Culture and History in the Pacific Pub Date : 2021-09-29 DOI: 10.33134/hup-12-15

G. Scoditti

{"title":"The ‘golden section’ on Kitawa Island","authors":"G. Scoditti","doi":"10.33134/hup-12-15","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33134/hup-12-15","url":null,"abstract":"When 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.","PeriodicalId":338517,"journal":{"name":"Culture and History in the Pacific","volume":"68 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116987541","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 1

Gift exchange and the construction of identity 礼物交换与身份建构

Culture and History in the Pacific Pub Date : 2021-09-29 DOI: 10.33134/hup-12-11

J. Liep

{"title":"Gift exchange and the construction of identity","authors":"J. Liep","doi":"10.33134/hup-12-11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33134/hup-12-11","url":null,"abstract":"One 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.","PeriodicalId":338517,"journal":{"name":"Culture and History in the Pacific","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117219707","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Class and social differentiation in Oceania 大洋洲的阶级和社会分化

Culture and History in the Pacific Pub Date : 2021-09-29 DOI: 10.33134/hup-12-9

V. Shnirelman

{"title":"Class and social differentiation in Oceania","authors":"V. Shnirelman","doi":"10.33134/hup-12-9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33134/hup-12-9","url":null,"abstract":"The 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.","PeriodicalId":338517,"journal":{"name":"Culture and History in the Pacific","volume":"181 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114206886","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Crossing Borders: Changing Contexts of This Book 跨越国界:这本书不断变化的背景

Culture and History in the Pacific Pub Date : 2021-09-29 DOI: 10.33134/hup-12-2

Petra Autio

{"title":"Crossing Borders: Changing Contexts of This Book","authors":"Petra Autio","doi":"10.33134/hup-12-2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33134/hup-12-2","url":null,"abstract":"Culture 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.","PeriodicalId":338517,"journal":{"name":"Culture and History in the Pacific","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133306202","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Decipherment of the Easter Island script 破译复活节岛的文字

Culture and History in the Pacific Pub Date : 2021-09-29 DOI: 10.33134/hup-12-16

N. A. Butinov

引用次数: 0

Chiefs, gender and hierarchy in Ngāpūtoru 酋长，性别和等级在Ngāpūtoru

Culture and History in the Pacific Pub Date : 2021-09-29 DOI: 10.33134/hup-12-8

Jukka Siikala

{"title":"Chiefs, gender and hierarchy in Ngāpūtoru","authors":"Jukka Siikala","doi":"10.33134/hup-12-8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33134/hup-12-8","url":null,"abstract":"The 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.","PeriodicalId":338517,"journal":{"name":"Culture and History in the Pacific","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129533151","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

The material culture of music performance on Manihiki 物质文化对马尼希基音乐的表现

Culture and History in the Pacific Pub Date : 2021-09-29 DOI: 10.33134/hup-12-14

H. Lawrence

引用次数: 0

‘Canoe traffic’ of the Torres Strait and Fly Estuary 托雷斯海峡和蝇口的“独木舟交通”

Culture and History in the Pacific Pub Date : 2021-09-29 DOI: 10.33134/hup-12-12

David Lawrence

引用次数: 0

Under the Toa tree: The genealogy of the Tongan Chiefs 在Toa树下:汤加酋长的家谱

Culture and History in the Pacific Pub Date : 2021-09-29 DOI: 10.33134/hup-12-7

Aletta Biersack

{"title":"Under the Toa tree: The genealogy of the Tongan Chiefs","authors":"Aletta Biersack","doi":"10.33134/hup-12-7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33134/hup-12-7","url":null,"abstract":"This 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.","PeriodicalId":338517,"journal":{"name":"Culture and History in the Pacific","volume":"35 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125043613","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

History and the representation of Polynesian societies 波利尼西亚社会的历史和表现

Culture and History in the Pacific Pub Date : 2021-09-29 DOI: 10.33134/hup-12-4

J. Huntsman, Antony Hooper

引用次数: 0