Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture, and Colonialism in the PacificEntangled Objects threatens to dislodge the cornerstone of Western anthropology by rendering permanently problematic the idea of reciprocity. All traffic, and commerce, whether economic or intellectual, between Western anthropologists and the rest of the world, is predicated upon the possibility of establishing reciprocal relations between the West and the indigenous peoples it has colonized for centuries. |
Contents
Objects Exchange Anthropology | 5 |
Prestations and Ideology | 7 |
The Inalienability of the Gift | 12 |
Immobile Value | 20 |
The Promiscuity of Objects | 25 |
A Surplus of Theories | 28 |
The Permutations of Debt Exchange Systems in the Pacific | 33 |
Alienation in Melanesian Exchange | 35 |
The Whale Tooth Trade and Fijian Politics | 108 |
Prior Systems and Later Histories | 116 |
The European Appropriation of Indigenous Things | 123 |
Colonialism in Its Infancy | 124 |
The Material Culture of Christian Missions | 145 |
Settlers Curios | 156 |
Ethnology and the Vision of the State | 161 |
Artifacts as Tokens of Industry | 169 |
Debts and Valuables in Fiji and the Marquesas | 57 |
Valuables with and without Histories | 63 |
The Origin of Whale Teeth | 67 |
Value Conversion versus Competition in Kind | 73 |
The Indigenous Appropriation of European Things | 81 |
The Allure of Barter | 82 |
The Musket Economy in the Southern Marquesas | 98 |
The Representation of the Foreign | 101 |
The Name of Science | 171 |
The Discovery of the Gift Exchange and Identity in the Contemporary Pacific | 179 |
Transformations of Fijian Ceremonies | 183 |
The Disclosure of Reciprocity | 194 |
Discoveries | 198 |
Notes | 205 |
Index | 251 |
Other editions - View all
Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture, and Colonialism in the Pacific Nicholas Thomas No preview available - 1991 |
Common terms and phrases
alienation anthropology appropriation artifacts associated Australian National University barkcloth barter brideservice canoes ceremonial exchange chapter chiefly chiefs collecting colonial constituted context contrast Cook curiosity customs debt discourse discussion distinction early economic ethnographic European expressed fact feasts Fiji Fijian foreign forms Gender George Forster gift and commodity gift economy Guinea Hocart Hügel Ibid idols important inalienable indigenous instance interest Johann Reinhold Forster Journal kava kind kula London Marquesan marriage Massim material culture mats Mauss's Melanesian missionary Museum narrative native Niue objectification objects ornaments Pacific Pacific Islands Papua Papua New Guinea particular person perspective pigs political Polynesian practice presentations prestations produced relations relationship ritual Savage sense shell singular social societies solevu Solomon Solomon Islands specific Strathern suggest Suva Sydney tabua Tahiti Tahitian things tion Tongan trade transactions valuables value conversion Vanuatu various village Viti Levu Voyage Western whale teeth women
Popular passages
Page 4 - One of the central ideas of the later sections of this work is that objects are not what they were made to be but what they have become.