Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons^™

Samoan Tā-Vā (Time-Space) Concepts And Practices In Language, Society, And Architecture, Fepulea‘I Micah Van Der Ryn

Pacific Studies

This essay gives new insights into indigenous Samoan spatial, temporal, and social concepts as distinctive aspects of Samoan culture, expressed linguistically, socially, and architecturally in a changing contemporary Samoan context. Four Samoan concepts are examined: (1) mata (the eye and a point of convergence and emanation), (2) tā (strike and a point in time), (3) vā (the interval and relation between points in space or time and society), and (4) tuā‘oi (neighbor and boundary). The general tā-vā theory of reality (Māhina 2008a, 2008b; Ka‘ili 2008) informs the analysis augmented by the theory of point-field spatiality as discussed by Lehman and …

From The Margins To The Frame: Social Identities And A “Pan-Pacific” Moana, Keara Sternberg

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This paper investigates the implications of Pacific representation and regional identity in Disney’s film, Moana. It evaluates if the film successfully represented a broad range of Pacific cultures and peoples. It weaves together 20 secondary sources, 8 interviews and 56 surveys. The sample population involved college-aged students from universities throughout the Pacific along with academic professionals and involved members of the Oceanic Story Trust. Overall, the study found that Moana successfully captured a pan-Pacific identity on several indicators, while it also found dissenting reactions toward the film by some respondents on measures of cultural representation. To Pacific students, Moana appears …

La Voz Spring 2017, El Instituto: Institute Of Latina/O, Caribbean, And Latin American Studies

La Voz

In this issue:

• Contested Citizenship Conference
• John N. Plank Cuban Lecture Series
• Borderlands Symposium
• York County PA Detention Center

'People Are Enemies To What They Don't Know' Managing Stigma And Anti-Muslim Stereotypes In A Turkish Community Center, Crystal Paul, Sarah Anna Becker

Faculty Publications

In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, anti-Muslim discourse and sentiment has become pervasive in the West. Using a collaborative ethnographic approach, we observe how participants at a Turkish Community Center (TCC) cultivate stigma management strategies against the cultural backdrop of post-9/11 anti-Muslim stereotypes. In our analysis, we use Goffman's work on stigma and critical race theory to explore the socially embedded nature of stigmatization processes for Turkish Muslims in a local community center. Our findings reveal how aspects of Turkish culture and Islam, together with a structural context …

The Mask Strikes Back: Blackness As Aporia In Moby-Dick And Benito Cereno, Jerome D. Clarke

Student Publications

What is the American Gothic a reaction to? Whereas other thinkers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne locates the building blocks of the American Gothic in Puritan Christianity or Amerindian Genocide, I argue that Melville posits the genesis of chattel slavery and the construction of racial category as the repressed events that haunt the Americas and return uninvited. By using the Gothic motif of the living corpse, the famed writer of Moby-Dick addresses the social bereavement which Blackness comes to represent in the Americas. By looking for truth on the skin and flesh, the main characters of Moby-Dick and “Benito Cereno” represent …

Ethnicity, Religion And Violence In Bosnia-Herzegovina, Jusuf Salih

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

The violence that erupted in the Balkans at the end of the second millennium made fierce enemies of people who had lived together in peace as neighbors, friends, classmates, and married couples. Nationalism, chauvinism, and religious fanaticism quickly grew stronger, leading to the disappearance of centuries-long harmony among its inhabitants. Among the reasons for the conflict were the experienced communist leaders who skillfully used religious slogans to advance their campaigns; also, religious leaders became close associates to political leaders with hopes that they would attain the religious rights denied and limited during the old governance. As a result, nationalism and …

Inlp Newsletter, April 2017, Indigenous Nations Library Program

Monthly Newsletters

Contents:

- INLP Digital Repository

- INLP Art Collection

- Spring 2017 Michael and Enokena Olson Memorial Scholarship Recipients:

• Jessica Benally
• Rookie Hoskie

- INLP Photo Contest Winner

The Trials Of Displacement: Transnationalism And Interdisciplinary Feminisms In Demetria Martínez’S The Block Captain’S Daughter, Elena Avilés

Chicano/Latino Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

From the fifteenth century to the twenty-first century, the interaction between dispossession and displacement are central questions Martinez channels in writing. Her work represents the struggle of contemporary feminist interventions on issues of international migration within the annals of the New Mexican borderlands. The power to generate reflexivity about gendered displacement begins to remap vision of identity in print that brings the reader to wage the multiple values of American society. Innovations to the experiences of women of multiethnic backgrounds are perhaps one of the strengths of her latest narrative.

Albuquerque is a backdrop where shifts and dislocations of the …

Water In Native American Spirituality: Liquid Life—Blood Of The Earth And Life Of The Community, June-Ann Greeley

Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Water: The life force of all creation, the generative dynamism of existence. Long before scientific experimentation and quantifiable instrumentation verified the facts, human beings have perceived and understood water to be the essence of all life, both material and spiritual. From the beginnings of recorded history and even before, across the expanse of human settlement and migration, indigenous as well as extraneous religions and spiritual traditions have celebrated water as the primordial source: water was sacred before it was material and water took on for multitudes of generations until even today an expansive inclusivity that scanned the literal to the …

Geographies Of Textile Authenticity: Marking Tongan Temporal And Social Relationships In Diasporic Cultural Production, Ping-Ann Addo

Pacific Studies

This study examines the production of traditional ngatu (bark cloth) and synthetic ngatu pepa among Tongan women, focusing on how these textile practices mediate cultural identity across diasporic spaces.

How The Tā-Vā Theory Of Reality Constructs A Spatial Exposition Of Samoan Architecture, Albert L. Refiti

Pacific Studies

This essay deals with a spatial exposition of Hufanga ʻOkusitino Māhina theory of tā-vā in which I argue that traditional Pacific concepts are recharged and extended by Māhina to create a new branch in Pacific Thought. I show that there is a consistency in the tā-vā theory of reality if one were to diagram its main tenets and, by doing so, enables the exposition of parts that sketch-out an overall form of theory. I also argue that doing theory is important to Pacific Thought because it allows for traditions and customs to be coiled-up into concepts allowing them to be …

Introduction: Tā-Vā (Time-Space): The Birth Of An Indigenous Moana Theory, Maui-Tāvā-He-Ako, Tēvita O. Ka‘Ili, Hūfanga, ‘Ōkusitino Māhina, Kula-He-Fonua, Ping-Ann Addo

Pacific Studies

An introduction to the special issue of the Pacific Studies Journal themed, "TĀ-VĀ (TIME-SPACE): THEORY OF REALITY".

Time, Space, And Culture: A New Tā-Vā Theory Of Moana Anthropology, Hūfanga, ‘Ōkusitino Māhina

Pacific Studies

This paper is primarily concerned with the formulation of a tā-vā theory of Moana anthropology. It does so by investigating the narrower conflicting formal and substantial relationships between Moana cultures as a form of social activity and Moana anthropology as a type of disciplinary practice in the broader complex interplay of temporality and spatiality. As a way forward, the paper calls into question the Moana phenomenon, exploring the formality, substantiality, and functionality of things within and across nature, mind and society, in the wider context of the tā-vā theory of reality. On this philosophical basis, the formulation of a tā-vā …

Tā-Vā Kāinga, Time-Space Relationships Theory Of Reality And Tongan Students Journey To Academic Achievement In New Zealand Tertiary Education, Telesia Kalavite

Pacific Studies

Tongan students’ academic achievement results when the different contexts of kāinga tā-vā, time-space relationships intersect or interact disharmoniously or harmoniously within and between the Tongan and Western cultures, especially between the students and the bureaucracy (puleʻanga), their families (fāmili), church (siasi), and wider group (their fonua/kāinga). Furthermore, inflexibility or flexibility within the two cultural relationships in terms of tā (time) and vā (space) by all parties could release social tensions, which can, if left to their own devices, provide obstacles to critical learning, or by mediating them through sustained harmony, can consequently …

Takohi: Drawing In Tongan Thinking And Practice, Hūfanga, ‘Ōkusitino Māhina

Pacific Studies

This original essay critically examines takohi as drawing in Tongan thinking and practice, which is connected with the intersecting or connecting and separating kohi (lines) and va (spaces) across the three divisions of Tongan art, notably tufunga (material) and nimamea’a (fine) arts. The word kohi is the older form of tohi, both of which mean “line.” Kohi, like tohi, is an expression of ta (time). By virtue of the indivisibility of ta (time) and va (space) in reality, as in nature, mind, and society, takohi (drawing) is equal to ta-va (time-space), with ta (time) spatially-composed and va (space) as temporally-marked. …

Circles Of Self: Tā-Vā Expressed In Traditional Samoan Dance, Culture And Self, Dianna M. Georgina

Pacific Studies

This study examines the tā-vā (time-space) theory and its application to Samoan cultural expression, particularly through the lens of the traditional Samoan dance.

Tatau: Symmetry As Conflict Mediation Of Line– Space Intersection, Sēmisi F. Potauaine

Pacific Studies

From a Tongan context, tatau (symmetry) also means mirror image, image, copy, likeness, same, and equal, among other things. My theoretical inquiry into tatau revolves around the tā-vā (time-space) theory of reality, which basically recognizes the philosophical fact that all things in reality stand in eternal relations of exchange, giving rise to order or conflict. By extension, the theory also takes into account the historical fact that because of these never-ending exchange connections, order and conflict are of the same logical order in that order is a form of conflict.

Samoan Cultural Perceptions Of Tā-Vā, Unasa L. F. Va‘A

Pacific Studies

This study examines the historical development and cultural significance of tā (time) and vā (space) concepts across Polynesian societies, with particular emphasis on Samoan cultural frameworks.

Vol. 40 No. 1/2 (2017): Pacific Studies Full Issue, The Jonathan Nāpela Center For Hawaiian And Pacific Islands Studies

Pacific Studies

Pacific Studies is published two times a year by The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies, Brigham Young University Hawai‘i #1979, 55–220 Kulanui Street, Lāʻie, Hawai‘i 96762, but responsibility for opinions expressed in the articles rests with the authors alone. Subscription rate is US$40.00 yearly, payable to The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies. The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies (formerly The Pacific Institute) is an organization funded by Brigham Young University Hawai‘i. The Center assists the University in meeting its cultural and educational goals by undertaking a program of teaching, research, and …

Concepts Of Tā-Vā (Time-Space) In The Art Practice Of Samoa-Aotearoa Artist Shigeyuki Kihara, Pamela Rosi

Pacific Studies

My paper considers concepts of tā-vā (time-space theory of reality) in the interdisciplinary art practice of Pacific Islander Shigeyuki Kihara, whose art is internationally acclaimed for its beauty, social criticism, and Moana identity linked to ties of community. With creative examples, I explore how Kihara’s constructions of tā-vā (a) reclaim Samoan histories and identities by subverting western fantasies of “dusky maidens” and a timeless South Seas Paradise; (b) challenge western binary norms of heterosexuality and gender from the traditional space (vā) she occupies as a fa‘afafine; and (c) embody Samoan deities to honor Moana spirituality and epistemologies. …