In Oceania: Visions, Artifacts, Histories

Couverture
Duke University Press, 1997 - 269 pages
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 of the Pacific themselves to illustrate how Oceanic identities have been represented over time. Not content with conventional methods of anthropology or history, Thomas draws on postcolonial theory and literary analysis in extraordinarily wide-ranging analyses of texts, visual images, and historical processes. He demonstrates how cultures of the Pacific Islands have dealt with colonialist ventures, modernity, and the debate about the recuperation of histories and traditions. The picture Thomas paints of Oceania, however, is not one of a group of societies stripped of meaning, but one that shows how the interactions between indigenous cultures and European influences have created entirely new identities.
 

Table des matières

VISIONS OF HISTORY AND ANTHROPOLOGY
21
Narratives about Millenarianism Colonialism
50
COLONIAL IMAGES AND NARRATIVES
69
Oceanic Artifacts in European Engravings
93
Ethnic Typifications inside and outside
133
Colonial and Postcolonial History
156
BEYOND THE INVENTION OF TRADITION
169
The Inversion of Tradition
186
Marriage and Identity in Western Fiji
210
From Contrast to Relation
227
Notes
235
References
245
Index
261
Droits d'auteur

Autres éditions - Tout afficher

Expressions et termes fréquents

À propos de l'auteur (1997)

Nicholas Thomas is Professor of Anthropology, Goldsmiths College, University of London. He is the author of numerous books, including Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture, and Colonialism in the Pacific.

Informations bibliographiques