Tuvaluan is a Polynesian language spoken by the 9000 inhabitants of the nine atolls of Tuvalu in the Central Pacific, as well as small and growing Tuvaluan communities in Fiji, New Zealand, and Australia. This grammar is the first detailed description of the structure of Tuvaluan, one of the least well-documented languages of Polynesia. While the language shares features commonly found amongst Polynesian languages, it exhibits a number of divergent features of interest to scholars of Pacific languages, comparative linguistics, language typology, and language universals. The text explores the...
Tuvaluan is a Polynesian language spoken by the 9000 inhabitants of the nine atolls of Tuvalu in the Central Pacific, as well as small and growing Tuv...
In this study Niko Besnier analyzes the transformation of the Polynesian community of Nukulaelae from a nonliterate into a literate society, using a contemporary perspective that emphasizes literacy as a social practice embedded in a socio-cultural context. His case study, which has implications for understanding literacy in other societies, illuminates the relationship between norm and practice, between structure and agency, and between group and individual.
In this study Niko Besnier analyzes the transformation of the Polynesian community of Nukulaelae from a nonliterate into a literate society, using a c...
In this study Niko Besnier analyzes the transformation of the Polynesian community of Nukulaelae from a nonliterate into a literate society, using a contemporary perspective that emphasizes literacy as a social practice embedded in a socio-cultural context. His case study, which has implications for understanding literacy in other societies, illuminates the relationship between norm and practice, between structure and agency, and between group and individual.
In this study Niko Besnier analyzes the transformation of the Polynesian community of Nukulaelae from a nonliterate into a literate society, using a c...
Life in twenty-first century Tonga is rife with uncertainties. Though the postcolonial island kingdom may give the appearance of stability and order, there is a malaise that pervades everyday life, a disquiet rooted in the feeling that the twin forces of "progress" and "development"--and the seemingly inevitable wealth distribution that follows from them--have bypassed the society. Niko Besnier's illuminating ethnography analyzes the ways in which segments of this small-scale society grapple with their growing anxiety and hold on to different understandings of what modernity means. How should...
Life in twenty-first century Tonga is rife with uncertainties. Though the postcolonial island kingdom may give the appearance of stability and order, ...
Life in twenty-first century Tonga is rife with uncertainties. Though the postcolonial island kingdom may give the appearance of stability and order, there is a malaise that pervades everyday life, a disquiet rooted in the feeling that the twin forces of "progress" and "development"--and the seemingly inevitable wealth distribution that follows from them--have bypassed the society. Niko Besnier's illuminating ethnography analyzes the ways in which segments of this small-scale society grapple with their growing anxiety and hold on to different understandings of what modernity means. How should...
Life in twenty-first century Tonga is rife with uncertainties. Though the postcolonial island kingdom may give the appearance of stability and order, ...
Although gossip is disapproved of across the world's societies, it is a prominent feature of sociality, whose role in the construction of society and culture cannot be overestimated. In particular, gossip is central to the enactment of politics: through it people transform difference into inequality and enact or challenge power structures. Based on the author's intimate ethnographic knowledge of Nukulaelae Atoll, Tuvalu, this work uses an analysis of gossip as political action to develop a holistic understanding of a number of disparate themes, including conflict, power, agency, morality,...
Although gossip is disapproved of across the world's societies, it is a prominent feature of sociality, whose role in the construction of society a...
Transgender identities and other forms of gender and sexuality that transcend the normative pose important questions about society, culture, politics, and history. They force us to question, for example, the forces that divide humanity into two gender categories and render them necessary, inevitable, and natural. The transgender also exposes a host of dynamics that, at first glance, have little to do with gender or sex, such as processes of power and domination; the complex relationship among agency, subjectivity, and structure; and the mutual constitution of the global and the...
Transgender identities and other forms of gender and sexuality that transcend the normative pose important questions about society, culture, politi...
Transgender identities and other forms of gender and sexuality that transcend the normative pose important questions about society, culture, politics, and history. They force us to question, for example, the forces that divide humanity into two gender categories and render them necessary, inevitable, and natural. The transgender also exposes a host of dynamics that, at first glance, have little to do with gender or sex, such as processes of power and domination; the complex relationship among agency, subjectivity, and structure; and the mutual constitution of the global and the...
Transgender identities and other forms of gender and sexuality that transcend the normative pose important questions about society, culture, politi...
