History and Traditions of Tikopia
Author: Raymond Firth
Publisher: Wellington, N.Z. : Polynesian Society
Published: 1961
Total Pages: 232
ISBN-13:
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Oral Traditions of Anuta : A Polynesian Outlier in the Solomon Islands
Author: Richard Feinberg Professor of Anthropology Kent State University
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 1998-04-28
Total Pages: 306
ISBN-13: 0195355474
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAnuta is a small Polynesian community in the eastern Solomon Islands that has had minimal contact with outside cultural forces. Even at the end of the twentieth century, it remains one of the most traditional and isolated islands in the insular Pacific. In Oral Traditions of Anuta, Richard Feinberg offers a telling collection of Anutan historical narratives, including indigenous texts and English translations. This rich, thorough assemblage is the result of a collaborative project between Feinberg and a large cross-section of the Anutan community that developed over a period of twenty-five years. The volume's emphasis is ethnographic, consisting of a number of texts as related by the island's most respected experts in matters of traditional history. Feinberg's annotations, which arm the reader with essential ethnographic and historical contexts, clarify important linguistic and cultural issues that arise from the stories. The texts themselves have important implications for the relationship of oral tradition to history and symbolic structures, and afford new evidence pertinent to Polynesian language sub-grouping. Further, they provide insight into a number of Anutan customs and preoccupations, while also suggesting certain widespread Polynesian practices dating back to the pre-contact and early contact periods.
History and Traditions of Tikopia
Author: Raymond Firth
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Published: 1961
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9780824805852
DOWNLOAD EBOOKRank and Religion in Tikopia (Routledge Revivals)
Author: Raymond Firth
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-09-05
Total Pages: 431
ISBN-13: 1136505512
DOWNLOAD EBOOKOriginally published in 1970, this book represents a unique study of beliefs and ritual practices in a pagan religion, and of the processes by which a transformation to Christianity took place. Christianity came to the major islands of Polynesia nearly two centuries ago, and within a couple of generations, the traditional pagan religion had disappeared. Only a few remote islands such as Tikopia preserved their ancient cults. Over eighty years ago, the author first observed and took part in these pagan rites, and on later visits he studied the change from paganism to Christian faith. Unique in its rich documentation, this book presents a systematic account of the traditional beliefs in gods and spirits and of the way in which these were fused with the social and political structure. The causes and dramatic results of the conversion to Christianity are then described, ending with an examination of the religious situation at the time of the book’s original publication. The book is both a contribution to anthropology and a case study in religious history. It completes the major series of studies of Tikopia society for which the author is famous. It gives the first full account of a Polynesian religious system in a state of change.
Culture and History in the Pacific
Author: Jukka Siikala
Publisher: Helsinki University Press
Published: 2021-09-29
Total Pages: 302
ISBN-13: 9523690477
DOWNLOAD EBOOKCulture 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.
Tikopia Songs
Author: Raymond Firth
Publisher:
Published: 1990
Total Pages: 336
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book shows how the poetry and music of a Polynesian people, the Tikopia, can have an intimate relation with their social life.
Oral Tradition as History
Author: Jan M. Vansina
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
Published: 1985-09-06
Total Pages: 273
ISBN-13: 0299102130
DOWNLOAD EBOOKJan Vansina’s 1961 book, Oral Tradition, was hailed internationally as a pioneering work in the field of ethno-history. Originally published in French, it was translated into English, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, and Hungarian. Reviewers were unanimous in their praise of Vansina’s success in subjecting oral traditions to intense functional analysis. Now, Vansina—with the benefit of two decades of additional thought and research—has revised his original work substantially, completely rewriting some sections and adding much new material. The result is an essentially new work, indispensable to all students and scholars of history, anthropology, folklore, and ethno-history who are concerned with the transmission and potential uses of oral material. “Those embarking on the challenging adventure of historical fieldwork with an oral community will find the book a valuable companion, filled with good practical advice. Those who already have collected bodies of oral material, or who strive to interpret and analyze that collected by others, will be forced to subject their own methodological approaches to a critical reexamination in the light of Vansina’s thoughtful and provocative insights. . . . For the second time in a quarter of a century, we are profoundly in the debt of Jan Vansina.”—Research in African Literatures “Oral Traditions as History is an essential addition to the basic literature of African history.”—American Historical Review
Unearthing the Polynesian Past
Author: Patrick Vinton Kirch
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Published: 2015-10-31
Total Pages: 401
ISBN-13: 0824853482
DOWNLOAD EBOOKPerhaps no scholar has done more to reveal the ancient history of Polynesia than noted archaeologist Patrick Vinton Kirch. For close to fifty years he explored the Pacific, as his work took him to more than two dozen islands spread across the ocean, from Mussau to Hawai'i to Easter Island. In this lively memoir, rich with personal—and often amusing—anecdotes, Kirch relates his many adventures while doing fieldwork on remote islands. At the age of thirteen, Kirch was accepted as a summer intern by the eccentric Bishop Museum zoologist Yoshio Kondo and was soon participating in archaeological digs on the islands of Hawai'i and Maui. He continued to apprentice with Kondo during his high school years at Punahou, and after obtaining his anthropology degree from the University of Pennsylvania, Kirch joined a Bishop Museum expedition to Anuta Island, where a traditional Polynesian culture still flourished. His appetite whetted by these adventures, Kirch went on to obtain his doctorate at Yale University with a study of the traditional irrigation-based chiefdoms of Futuna Island. Further expeditions have taken him to isolated Tikopia, where his excavations exposed stratified sites extending back three thousand years; to Niuatoputapu, a former outpost of the Tongan maritime empire; to Mangaia, with its fortified refuge caves; and to Mo'orea, where chiefs vied to construct impressive temples to the war god 'Oro. In Hawai'i, Kirch traced the islands' history in the Anahulu valley and across the ancient district of Kahikinui, Maui. His joint research with ecologists, soil scientists, and paleontologists elucidated how Polynesians adapted to their island ecosystems. Looking back over the past half-century of Polynesian archaeology, Kirch reflects on how the questions we ask about the past have changed over the decades, how archaeological methods have advanced, and how our knowledge of the Polynesian past has greatly expanded.
History and Ethnicity
Author: Elizabeth Tonkin
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-04-14
Total Pages: 283
ISBN-13: 1317271831
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThese essays examine the importance of historical consicousness and the role of historiography in ‘ethnic’ situations, exploring the many ways in which ethnic groups select history, write or rewrite it, rescue appropriate or ignore it, forget or traduce it. Drawing on expert knowledge of regions ranging from the Amazon to contemporary Germany, the contributors bring anthropological and historical understanding to answer these questions, and investigate major topics such as the relationship between ethnic, national and state identifications, and the cultural work of creating them. Examples include Afrikaaners and Northern Ireland Protestants, as well as Mormons and Catalans. Bringing together a variety of themes that have recently become the focus of study – ethnicity, the uses and nature of history and the likelihood of objectivity in historical telling – the book will be of great interest ot students in the social sciences, anthropology, politics, history and international relations.
Social Change in Tikopia
Author: Raymond Firth
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-10-11
Total Pages: 369
ISBN-13: 1136537457
DOWNLOAD EBOOKRe-visiting Tikopia a decade after his first visit, Raymond Firth here examines what impact the forces of modernization had on Tikopia society with regard to economics, law, politics and social affairs. Suffering a famine whilst there, the author also examined the issues of responsibility for the famine; problems of distribution in ceremonial and ritual; institutional developments from the famine. Originally published in 1959.
