ABSTRACT
In Pacific societies, local knowledge, which has been accumulated over thousands of years and is irreplaceable, is rapidly disappearing. With the extinction of languages, the ability to observe and interpret the world from varying perspectives is also being lost. At the same time, an enormous body of knowledge about nature, plants and animals is vanishing. However, in parallel with this, the people of the Pacific are confronted with new modes of knowledge and newly introduced technologies through imported educational systems, missions of various denominations, and the media. They do not passively assimilate this knowledge but adopt, adapt, and apply it in a syncretistic way.These changes will have permanent effects on the individual lives of people in the region and their knowledge about themselves and their surrounding 'world'. This stimulating book tracks the course of these developments and offers revealing insights into the complexity of Pacific peoples' responses to the process of globalization.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|21 pages
Prologue
part II|63 pages
Embodied Personhood
chapter Chapter 3|23 pages
On the Acquisition of Knowledge: Teaching Kinship through the Body among the Tiwi of Northern Australia
chapter Chapter 4|21 pages
Cannibalism and Compassion: Transformations in Fijian Concepts of the Person
part III|51 pages
Changing Life Histories
part IV|59 pages
Local Recasting of Christianity
chapter Chapter 7|36 pages
‘Praying Samoa and Praying Oui-Oui’: Making Christianity Local on Lifu (Loyalty Islands)
part V|56 pages
Experiencing Outside Worlds
chapter Chapter 9|20 pages
Experiencing Outside Worlds: Tannese Labour Recruitment in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century
part VI|92 pages
Appropriating New Forms of Knowledge
chapter Chapter 12|21 pages
Showing the Invisible: Violence and Politics among the Ankave-Anga (Gulf Province, Papua New Guinea)
chapter Chapter 13|19 pages
‘Big Man’ and ‘Big Woman’ in the Village – Elite in the Town. The Iatmul, Papua New Guinea
part VII|27 pages
Epilogue