Description
Book SynopsisThomas takes up issues central to modern anthropology: the cultural and political dynamics of colonial encounters, the nature of Western and non-Western transactions, and the significance of material objects in social life. He raises doubts about any simple “us/them” dichotomy between Westerners and Pacific Islanders.
Trade ReviewPowerful and provocative. -- Roy Wagner, University of Virginia
Table of ContentsPart 1 Objects, exchange, anthropology: prestations and ideology; the inalienability of the gift; immobile value; the promiscuity of objects; value - a surplus of theories. Part 2 The permutations of debt - exchange systems in the Pacific: alienation in Melanesian exchange; debts and valuables in Fiji and the Marquesas; valuables with and without histories; the origin of whale teeth; value conversion versus competition in kind. Part 3 The indigenous appropriation of European things: the allure of barter; the musket economy in the southern Marquesas; the representation of the foreign; the whale tooth trade and Fijian politics; prior systems and later histories. Part 4 The European appropriation of indigenous things: curiosity - colonialism in its infancy; converted artifacts - the material culture of Christian missions; murder stories - settlers' curios; ethnology and the vision of the state; artifacts as tokens of industry; the name of science. Part 5 The discovery of the gift - exchange and identity in the contemporary Pacific: transformations of Fijian ceremonies; the disclosure of reciprocity; discoveries.
