The literature on shamanism and related topics is extensive, but has in general been biased toward curing and trance; the political and historical significance of shamanic activities has been largely neglected. The contributors to Shamanism, History, and the State--distinguished anthropologists and historians from England, Australia, and France--show that shamanism is not static and stable, but always changing as a result of political dynamics and historical processes. Contributors are Tamsyn Barton, Sysan Bayly, Mary Beard, Maurice Bloch, Peter Gow, Roberte N. Hamayon, Stephen...
The literature on shamanism and related topics is extensive, but has in general been biased toward curing and trance; the political and historical sig...
Taking as its departure point Bernard Smith's classic study, European Vision and the South Pacific (1960), Double Vision explores the ambivalences of European perceptions of the Pacific and juxtaposes them with the indigenous visual cultures that challenge Western assumptions about art and representation. Double Vision addresses these larger interpretive questions through case studies of the cultures of voyages, colonial art, and indigenous affirmations of identity. It suggests that images and texts can be combined through a new practice of innovative, visually oriented cultural history. This...
Taking as its departure point Bernard Smith's classic study, European Vision and the South Pacific (1960), Double Vision explores the ambivalences of ...
Entangled Objects threatens to dislodge the cornerstone of Western anthropology by rendering permanently problematic the idea of reciprocity. All traffic, and commerce, whether economic or intellectual, between Western anthropologists and the rest of the world, is predicated upon the possibility of establishing reciprocal relations between the West and the indigenous peoples it has colonized for centuries.
Drawing on his work on contemporary postcolonial Pacific societies, Nicholas Thomas takes up three issues central to modern anthropology: the cultural and political dynamics...
Entangled Objects threatens to dislodge the cornerstone of Western anthropology by rendering permanently problematic the idea of reciprocity...
In this collection of essays, ""Nicholas Thomas, a leading theorist of historical anthropology, explores the historicization of cultural encounters in the region referred to as Oceania. Basing his claims on wide-ranging historical and ethnographic research and building on his celebrated studies of exchange and colonialism in the Pacific, Thomas describes how outsiders and islanders alike have constructed indigenous cultures over the last two hundred years. "In Oceania" documents and analyzes the "rhetorical artifacts" of explorers, missionaries, fiction and travel writers, and the people...
In this collection of essays, ""Nicholas Thomas, a leading theorist of historical anthropology, explores the historicization of cultural encounters in...
In "Bad Colonists" Nicholas Thomas and Richard Eves provide a window into the fantasies and realities of colonial life by presenting separate sets of letters by two late-nineteenth-century British colonists of the South Pacific: Vernon Lee Walker and Louis Becke. Thomas and Eves frame the letters--addressed mostly to the colonists' mothers--with commentary that explores colonial degeneration in the South Pacific. Using critical anthropology and theories of history-making to view the letter as artifact and autobiography, they examine the process whereby men and women unraveled in the hot,...
In "Bad Colonists" Nicholas Thomas and Richard Eves provide a window into the fantasies and realities of colonial life by presenting separate sets of ...
George Forster's A Voyage Round the World presents a wealth of geographic, scientific, and ethnographic knowledge uncovered by Cook's second journey of exploration in the Pacific (1772-1775). Accompanying his father, the ship's naturalist Johann Reinhold Forster, on the voyage, George proved a knowledgeable and adept observer. The lively, elegant prose and critical detail of his account, based loosely on his father's journal, make it one of the finest works of eighteenth-century travel literature and an account of prime importance in the history of European contact with Pacific peoples....
George Forster's A Voyage Round the World presents a wealth of geographic, scientific, and ethnographic knowledge uncovered by Cook's second journe...
The anthropology of art is currently at a crossroads. Although well versed in the meaning of art in small-scale tribal societies, anthropologists are still wrestling with the question of how to interpret art in a complex, post-colonial environment. Alfred Gell recently confronted this problem in his posthumous book Art and Agency. The central thesis of his study was that art objects could be seen, not as bearers of meaning or aesthetic value, but as forms mediating social action. At a stroke, Gell provocatively dismissed many longstanding but tired questions of definition and issues of...
The anthropology of art is currently at a crossroads. Although well versed in the meaning of art in small-scale tribal societies, anthropologists a...
It is striking that in many Pacific nations, 'national' narratives are subordinate to other fundamental historical imaginings, such as those concerning local political dynasties and conversion to Christianity. While leaders in Pacific states have frequently sought to legitimate new nations through local 'tradition' and 'custom', these constructions of identity frequently mask divisions arising from gender, hierarchy, and other social relationships. These studies from Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, Samoa and the Cook Islands add much to our knowledge of historical imaginings and contemporary...
It is striking that in many Pacific nations, 'national' narratives are subordinate to other fundamental historical imaginings, such as those concernin...
The anthropology of art is currently at a crossroads. Although well versed in the meaning of art in small-scale tribal societies, anthropologists are still wrestling with the question of how to interpret art in a complex, post-colonial environment. Alfred Gell recently confronted this problem in his posthumous book Art and Agency. The central thesis of his study was that art objects could be seen, not as bearers of meaning or aesthetic value, but as forms mediating social action. At a stroke, Gell provocatively dismissed many longstanding but tired questions of definition and issues of...
The anthropology of art is currently at a crossroads. Although well versed in the meaning of art in small-scale tribal societies, anthropologists a...
Despite the enormous amount of work that has attempted to combine historical and anthropological approaches in recent years, few books have outlined the underlying premises that make integration of the two fields difficult. In Out of Time, Nicholas Thomas argues that a "historical perspective" cannot simply be added to conventional anthropology, which systematically takes ethnography "out of time." Drawing examples from the Polynesian anthropological literature, he points to discredited social evolutionary ideas that have persisted even after apparently dramatic theoretical shifts and...
Despite the enormous amount of work that has attempted to combine historical and anthropological approaches in recent years, few books have outlined t...
