Living Kinship in the Pacific

Published by Berghahn Books 2015

Living Kinship in the Pacific

Edited by: Christina Toren and Simonne Pauwels

Volume 4 in the series Pacific Perspectives: Studies of the European Society for Oceanists

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781782385783

Overview
Contents

About this book

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.

Author / Editor information

Christina Toren is Professor of Anthropology and founding Director of the Centre for Pacific Studies at the University of St Andrews. Her works include Mind, Materiality and History (1999) and The Challenge of Epistemology (co-edited with João de Pina-Cabral, 2012).

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).

Christina Toren is Professor of Anthropology and founding Director of the Centre for Pacific Studies at the University of St Andrews. Her works include Mind, Materiality and History (1999) and The Challenge of Epistemology (co-edited with João de Pina-Cabral, 2012).

Reviews

“Living Kinship in the Pacific is a collection of high-quality research articles whose foci coincide to a remarkable degree… [It] will be of lasting value to scholars of the region for years to come—because knowledge of kinship will be knowledge that counts for a long time to come.” • The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology (TAPJA)

“As an edited work, comprised of thoughtful, detailed, erudite research essays largely by anthropologists and linguists, Living Kinship is a work for specialists. Many of the essays are highly technical, dealing with semantic features of kinship terminology, linguistic descriptors, generational differentiators, and spatial arrangements for ceremonial recognition of familial relations. At the same time, it does have an engagingly comprehensive thesis about the complexities of kinship ties and a number of important implications for broader Pacific scholarship.” • Journal of New Zealand & Pacific Studies

“Altogether, this collection goes a long way to meeting the volume’s main objectives. The volume provides ethnographically-grounded overviews of the various ways kinship in these locales continues to serve as vital ‘knowledge that counts.’ … the volume will be a valuable resource for Pacific Islands scholars who will also have to consider the ways that kinship matters in their field sites as a central dimension of everyday life. The volume also provides useful resources for teaching contemporary Pacific kinship in the Pacific.” • Anthropos

“…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

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Figures and Tables Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Introduction. Kinship in the Pacific as Knowledge that Counts Christina Toren and Simonne Pauwels Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1 The Mutual Implication of Kinship and Chiefship in Fiji Unaisi Nabobo-Baba Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	15
2 Pigs for Money Kinship and the Monetization of Exchange among the Truku Ching-Hsiu Lin Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	36
3 Fijian Kinship Exchange and Migration Jara Hulkenberg Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	60
4 Gendered Sides and Ritual Moieties Tokelau Kinship as Social Practice Ingjerd Hoëm Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	87
5 Tongan Kinship Terminology and Social Stratification Svenja Völkel Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	107
6 ‘I Suffered When My Sister Gave Birth’ Transformations of the Brother–Sister Bond among the Ankave-Anga of Papua New Guinea Pascale Bonnemère Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	128
7 The Vasu Position and the Sister’s Mana The Case of Lau, Fiji Simonne Pauwels Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	143
8 ‘Sister or Wife, You’ve Got to Choose’ A Solution to the Puzzle of Village Exogamy in Samoa Serge Tcherkézoff Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	166
9 The Sister’s Return The Brother–Sister Relationship, the Tongan Fahu and the Unfolding of Kinship in Polynesia Françoise Douaire-Marsaudon Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	186
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 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	207
11 How Ritual Articulates Kinship Christina Toren Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	242
Notes on Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	257
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	261

Language: English
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 274
Keywords: Anthropology (General)

eBook

Published: April 1, 2015
ISBN: 9781782385783