Living Kinship in the Pacific / Edition 1

by Christina Toren, Simonne Pauwels

Overview

Unaisi Nabobo-Baba observed that for the various peoples of the Pacific, kinship is generally understood as "knowledge that counts." It is with this observation that this volume begins, and it continues with a straightforward objective to provide case studies of Pacific kinship. In doing so, contributors share an understanding of kinship as a lived and living dimension of contemporary human lives, in an area where deep historical links provide for close and useful comparison. The ethnographic focus is on transformation and continuity over time in Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa with the addition of three instructive cases from Tokelau, Papua New Guinea, and Taiwan. The book ends with an account of how kinship is constituted in day-to-day ritual and ritualized behavior.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781785335204
Publisher:	Berghahn Books
Publication date:	04/01/2017
Series:	Pacific Perspectives: Studies of the European Society for Oceanists , #4
Pages:	274
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Simonne Pauwels is a Researcher at CNRS and the adjunct Director of CREDO. Before working in Fiji, she conducted research in Eastern Indonesia for many years and, besides a number of articles, has written Metanleru, un voilier prédateur: Renommée et fertilité dans l'île de Selaru (2009) and D'un nom à l'autre en Asie du Sud-Est, Approches ethnologiques (co-edited with Josiane Massard-Vincent, 1999).

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Introduction: Kinship in the Pacific as Knowledge that Counts
Christina Toren and Simonne Pauwels

Chapter 1. The Mutual Implication of Kinship and Chiefship in Fiji
Unaisi Nabobo-Baba

Chapter 2. Pigs for Money: Kinship and the Monetisation of Exchange among the Truku
Ching-Hsiu Lin

Chapter 3. Fijian Kinship: Exchange and Migration
Jara Hulkenberg

Chapter 4. Gendered Sides and Ritual Moieties: Tokelau Kinship as Social Practice
Ingjerd Hoëm

Chapter 5. Tongan Kinship Terminology and Social Stratification
Svenja Völkel

Chapter 6. ‘I suffered when my sister gave birth.’ Transformations of the Brother–Sister Bond Among the Ankave-Anga of Papua New Guinea
Pascale Bonnemère

Chapter 7. The Vasu Position and the Sister’s Mana. The Case of Lau (Fiji)
Simonne Pauwels

Chapter 8. Sister or Wife? You’ve Got to Choose. A Solution to the Puzzle of Village Exogamy in Samoa
Serge Tcherkézoff

Chapter 9. The Sister’s Return. The Brother-Sister Relationship, the Tongan Fahu and the Unfolding of Kinship in Polynesia
Françoise Douaire-Marsaudon

Chapter 10. How Would We Have Got Here if our Paternal Grandmother Had Not Existed? Relations of Locality, Blood, Life and Name in Nasau (Fiji)
Françoise Cayrol

Chapter 11. How ritual articulates kinship
Christina Toren

Notes on Contributors

Editorial Reviews

"...there are excellent accounts of culturally specific renderings of biological relatedness across the cultures described here... Overall, we are offered ethnographically rich insights into contemporary kinship as grounded in longstanding traditions and persisting in the face of tremendous forces of change." - Anthropology Book Forum "Living Kinship in the Pacific successfully makes the case for the power of kinship in contemporary Pacific societies and hopefully encourages anthropologists to take it seriously and search for its function for peoples all around the world." - Anthropology Review Database "Studying kinship is like vitamins for anthropologists: it's always beneficial and we don't get enough. This book provides strong and useful accounts of contemporary understandings of kinship in the Pacific." - Matt Tomlinson, Australian National University "A timely and worthwhile book. The introduction is compelling and contemporary, and the chapters in the main are very well written, clear, interesting, and suggestive... [the] enlightening discussion of ritual and learning in childhood, and what that implies for how people come to 'know' about kin... and about the significance and meaning of [kinship] practices, is excellent." - James Leach, Researcher CNRS, CREDO

From the Publisher