Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons^™

South African Marriage In Policy And Practice: A Dynamic Story, Michael W. Yarbrough

Publications and Research

Law forms one of the major structural contexts within which family lives play out, yet the precise dynamics connecting these two foundational institutions are still poorly understood. This article attempts to help bridge this gap by applying sociolegal concepts to empirical findings about state law's role in family, and especially in marriage, drawn from across several decades and disciplines of South Africanist scholarly research. I sketch the broad outlines of a nuanced theoretical approach for analysing the law-family relationship, which insists that the relationship entails a contingent and dynamic interplay between relatively powerful regulating institutions and relatively powerless regulated populations. …

Conjuring The Close From Afar A Border-Crossing Tale Of Vieques’ Activism And Obama-Empire, Víctor M. Torres-Vélez, Sarah Molinari, Katharine Lawrence

Publications and Research

After more than 60 years of military occupation, 30 of these under violent military practices, a social movement forced the U.S. Navy from the island of Vieques. This victory would not have been possible without the highly effective organization of civil disobedience carried out on the island. But the sum total of the actions that eventually forced out the U.S. Navy, neither happened exclusively within the boundaries of Vieques, nor was carried out by Viequense residents alone. In this article we want to suggest that this amazing victory—a testament of people’s will in the face of globalization—is also a border- …

An Analysis Of Personal Adornment At Fort St. Joseph (20be23), An Eighteenth-Century French Trading Post In Southwest Michigan, Ian B. Kerr

Masters Theses

Since 1998 Western Michigan University archaeologists have investigated Fort St. Joseph (20BE23), an 18th century mission, garrison and trading post located in present day Niles, Michigan. The project’s research directive focuses on exploring notions of identity formation and its material expression in light of the prolonged and persistent cultural contact between Native Americans and Europeans at the site.

This thesis seeks to further this directive by exploring how personal adornment materiality both structures and broadcasts individuals’ social identities. By employing an intrasite spatial analysis of the assemblage of adornment artifacts from recognized domestic contexts at Fort St. Joseph this thesis …

Chapter 5, History, In Intimacy And Community In A Changing World: Sikaiana Life 1980-1993, William Donner

Sikaiana Ethnography

This chapter is a discussion of the legendary and the more recent recorded history of the Sikaiana people from the Solomon Islands.

A related website can be found at www.sikaianaarchives.com

Confraternity And Community : Negotiating Ethnicity, Gender And Place In Colonial Tecamachalco, Mexico, Annette Dionne Richie

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Cofradías, lay religious brotherhoods introduced to New Spain by Mendicant friars in the mid-16th century, were optimal vehicles for corporate consciousness. This case study in colonialism, evangelization and ethnic politics centers on avenues and strategies for assessing, accommodating and rejecting cultural elements from "foreign" groups, as well as the freedom to assemble and incorporate, but also marginalize, others.

A Clash Of Worldviews: The Impact Of Modern Western Notion Of Progress On Indigenous Naga Culture, Tezenlo Thong

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The term "progress" is a modern Western notion that life is always improving and advancing toward an ideal state. It is a vital modern concept which underlies geographic explorations and scientific and technological inventions as well as the desire to harness nature in order to increase human beings' ease and comfort. With the advent of Western colonization and to the great detriment of the colonized, the notion of progress began to perniciously and pervasively permeate across cultures.

During the classical colonial period, Western anthropologists, sociologists and others had hypothesized, or at least ardently bought into the notion, that human beings, …

The Evangelical Movement In Ecuador, Steve Grosz

Honors Capstones

Capstone submitted as a graduation requirement for the BSU Honors Program.

Ethnic Intercession: Leadership At Kalaupapa Leprosy Colony, 1871–1887, Pennie Moblo

Pacific Studies

Western notions of leadership can obscure the complexity of colonial history. This article examines ethnic relations in Hawai‘i via its Hansen’s disease colony during the years immediately preceding the overthrow of the monarchy. Popular accounts of Kalaupapa portray a nineteenth-century prison of iniquity where native Hawaiians, sequestered from the controls of civilization, degenerated to a state of “savagery” until a European priest saved them. This image is challenged by letters and reports to the Board of Health, which invoke an alternative history focused on the dialogue between native patients and foreign advisors in government. It is argued here that the …

Caroline Sinavaiana-Gabbard's Review Of John Kneubuhl's Think Of A Garden And Other Plays, Caroline Sinavaiana-Gabbard

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

Suzanne Falgout And James West Turner's Review Of Lieweila: A Micronesian Story, Suzanne Falgout, James West Turner

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

Marta Rohatynskyj's Review Of Advertising Missionaries And Pacific Passages, Marta Rohatynskyj

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

J. Kehaulani Kauanui's Review Of Nâ Maka O Ka ‘Âina's Act Of War—The Overthrow Of The Hawaiian Nation And E Ola Ka ‘Ōlelo Hawai‘I, J. Kēhaulani Kauanui

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

Chiefs For The Nation: Containing Ethnonationalism And Bridging The Ethnic Divide In Fiji, Robert Norton

Pacific Studies

Chiefship, a central element of indigenous Fijian society valorized and transformed under colonial rule, is becoming a crucial part of a national political culture for multiethnic Fiji. The collective status and authority of chiefs in Fiji’s political life is grounded not simply in the part they have played in expressing opposition between indigenous Fijians and the descendants of the immigrant Indians, but also in a paradoxical function they have acquired in bridging ethnic conflict. This dual ethnic and national identity was affirmed and reinforced by their endorsement of the recent constitutional reform. This article suggests that in its capacity to …

Lin Poyer's Review Of David Hanlon's Remaking Micronesia: Discourses Over Development In A Pacific Territory, Lin Poyer

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

Toward Historizing Gender In Polynesia: On Vilsoni Hereniko’S Woven Gods And Regional Patterns, Jeannette Marie Mageo

Pacific Studies

This article considers possible parallels between Rotuman and Samoan gender history through Vilsoni Hereniko’s book Woven Gods. Hereniko draws upon the work of Victor Turner to analyze his Rotuman data, arguing that wedding clowns reverse normative social structures. Wedding clowns are expert female practitioners of Rotuman joking discourse. This discourse is not only ritualized on special occasions but is also an everyday informal discourse and, I argue, is in this sense normative; it counterbalances respect discourse, which is likewise practiced in ritual (ceremonial) contexts but also in everyday polite contexts. In the Samoan precolonial sex-gender system, males and females had …

Pamela J. Stewart And Andrew Strathern's Review Of D. C. Lewis's The Plantation Dream: Developing British New Guinea And Papua, 1884–1942, Pamela J. Stewart, Andrew Strathern

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

Deborah Bird Rose's Review Of Trevor Graham's Mabo: Life Of An Island Man, Deborah Bird Rose

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

Jane C. Goodale's Review Of Three Films By Tracey Moffatt: Nice Coloured Girls, Night Cries: A Rural Tragedy, And Bedevil, Jane C. Goodale

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

The Anglicans In New Guinea And The Torres Strait Islands, David Wetherell

Pacific Studies

This study compares the Anglican diocese of Carpentaria in northeastern Australia with its Anglican neighbor the diocese of New Guinea. While New Guinea called for sacrifice on a heroic scale as befitted a mission among pure “pagans,” Carpentaria was intended primarily as a church for Europeans. However, the withdrawal of thousands of settlers from the Gulf of Carpentaria country from 1910 to 1942 in the wake of recurrent cyclones, economic depression, and drought led to wholesale white depopulation. This depopulation, added to the Anglicans’ acceptance of the London Missionary Society’s sphere in the Torres Strait Islands, left Carpentaria overwhelmingly Islander …

Vol. 21 No. 4 (1998): 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 …

Books Received And Book Notices, The Jonathan Nāpela Center For Hawaiian And Pacific Islands Studies

Pacific Studies

Book Listing for the Vol 21, No 4 Edition of the Pacific Studies Journal

The Emergence Of An Ethnic Millenarian Thinking And The Development Of Nationalism In Tahiti, Bruno Saura

Pacific Studies

This article analyzes the emergence in Tahiti of a body of theological and philosophical works written in Tahitian by Duro Raapoto, the leading intellectual of the Protestant Church and one of the best poets of French Polynesia. They constitute a new syncretic and millennialistic rewriting of Tahitian history as well as a rereading of anthropological ideas relative to pre-European society through a reinterpretation of some essential concepts of Polynesian culture. Their author’s objective is to restore the golden age of innocence presented as “the authentic Tahitian religion” and to establish the Kingdom of God within the Tahitian people, “God’s chosen.” …

Contributors: Vol 21 No. 4, The Jonathan Nāpela Center For Hawaiian And Pacific Islands Studies

Pacific Studies

Contributors list of Vol. 21 (1998): Pacific Studies Full Issue 4

Jane C. Goodale's Review Of Eric Venbrux's A Death In The Tiwi Islands: Conflict, Ritual, And Social Life In An Australian Aboriginal Community, Jane C. Goodale

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

William C. Clarke's Review Of R. Gerard Ward And Elizabeth Kingdon's Land, Custom, And Practice In The South Pacific, William C. Clarke

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

Marcelous Akapito And Joakim Peter's Review Of Vicente M. Diaz's Sacred Vessels: Navigating Tradition And Identity In Micronesia, Marcelous Akapito, Joakim Peter

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

Dressing, Undressing, And Early European Contact In Australia And Tahiti, Michael Sturma

Pacific Studies

Dress and presentation of the body serve as important points of reference in cross-cultural transactions but are potentially confusing. Focusing on early encounters between Europeans and the indigenous peoples of Australia and Tahiti, I argue that certain tactics were commonly adopted to facilitate communication across cultures and dress codes. I have categorized these patterns of discourse as exposure, make-overs, and appropriation. While these tactics could assist in developing cross-cultural relationships, they also created their own ambiguities.

White Shadows In The Darkness: Representations Of Polynesian Women In Early Cinema, Margaret Jolly

Pacific Studies

This article considers representations of Polynesian women in two early Hollywood films: Moana (1926) and Tabu (1931). It ponders the tensions not just between the cinematic visions of Robert Flaherty and F. W. Murnau, but between ethnographic recuperations and romantic celebrations of Polynesian women, in the light of de Lauretis’s contentions (in Technologies of Gender, 1987) that gendered identities are neither fixed nor immutable, but shifting and fluid effects.

Western Women’S Travel Writing About The Pacific Islands, Claudia Knapman

Pacific Studies

Although there has been a revival of interest in nineteenth-century women’s travel writing, this is a neglected area of Pacific scholarship. Though the work of Western women travelers who wrote about the Pacific Islands has been drawn upon by some researchers, this literature has not received attention as a genre, as a body of source material, or as the focus of academic research questions. This article, while neither a detailed analysis of particular writers and their works nor an attempt to delineate the field, uses three categorizations--the realist, the protofeminist, and the orientalist--derived from analyses of women’s travel writing elsewhere …

Vol. 20 No. 2 (1997): Pacific Studies Front Matter, 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 …