Contrary to conventional anthropological understanding, descent groups need not always be wealth- or office-transmitting groups, but can be principally feast-sponsoring groups. Sursurunga matrilineages are activated by individual's combined participation in feasting events, but individual's reasons for participating in feasts vary and often have little to do with matrilineal group membership.
This study of Sursurunga mortuary feasting shows that the analysis of groups-in this case, matrilineal descent groups-is best conducted by attention to the reasons that the individuals who comprise...
Contrary to conventional anthropological understanding, descent groups need not always be wealth- or office-transmitting groups, but can be princip...
Europeans' romanticist imaginings of people from the South Pacific have been around since the Enlightenment and have been significantly informed by the accounts of voyages to Tahiti by people such as Louis Bougainville. This book shows that the overtly promiscuous behavior that the French perceived as hospitality on the part of the Tahitians in 1768 was actually a defensive ploy, and that our contemporary image of sex and sexuality in Pacific Island societies is influenced by a fantasy based on this French misperception.
This volume takes a very detailed look at traditional Tahitian...
Europeans' romanticist imaginings of people from the South Pacific have been around since the Enlightenment and have been significantly informed by...
