Description
Book Synopsis 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.
Trade Review “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
Table of Contents List of Illustrations
Introduction: Kinship in the Pacific as Knowledge that Counts
Christina Toren and Simonne Pauwels
Chapter 1. The Mutual Implication of Kinship and Chiefship in Fiji
Unaisi Nabobo-Baba
Chapter 2. Pigs for Money: Kinship and the Monetisation of Exchange among the Truku
Ching-Hsiu Lin
Chapter 3. Fijian Kinship: Exchange and Migration
Jara Hulkenberg
Chapter 4. Gendered Sides and Ritual Moieties: Tokelau Kinship as Social Practice
Ingjerd Hoëm
Chapter 5. Tongan Kinship Terminology and Social Stratification
Svenja Völkel
Chapter 6. ‘I suffered when my sister gave birth.’ Transformations of the Brother–Sister Bond Among the Ankave-Anga of Papua New Guinea
Pascale Bonnemère
Chapter 7. The Vasu Position and the Sister’s Mana. The Case of Lau (Fiji)
Simonne Pauwels
Chapter 8. Sister or Wife? You’ve Got to Choose. A Solution to the Puzzle of Village Exogamy in Samoa
Serge Tcherkézoff
Chapter 9. The Sister’s Return. The Brother-Sister Relationship, the Tongan Fahu and the Unfolding of Kinship in Polynesia
Françoise Douaire-Marsaudon
Chapter 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
Chapter 11. How ritual articulates kinship
Christina Toren
Notes on Contributors
