Search results for ""author miriam kahn""
University of Washington Press Tahiti Beyond the Postcard: Power, Place, and Everyday Life
Winner of the 2013 ICAS Book Prize (Social Sciences) The “Tahiti” that most people imagine - white-sand beaches, turquoise lagoons, and beautiful women - is a product of 18th century European romanticism and persists today as the bedrock of Tahiti’s tourism industry. This postcard image, however, masks a different reality. The dreams and desires that the tourism industry promotes distract from the medical nightmares and environmental destruction caused by France’s 30-year nuclear testing program in French Polynesia. Tahitians see the burying of a bomb in their land as deeply offensive. For Tahitians, the land abounds with ancestral fertility, and genealogical identity, and is a source of physical and spiritual nourishment. These imagined and lived perspectives seem incompatible, yet are intricately intertwined in the political economy. Tahiti Beyond the Postcard engages with questions about the subtle but ubiquitous ways in which power entangles itself in place-related ways. Miriam Kahn uses interpretive frameworks of both Tahitian and European scholars, drawing upon ethnographic details that include ancient chants, picture postcards, antinuclear protests, popular song lyrics, and the legacy of Paul Gauguin’s art, to provide fresh perspectives on colonialism, tourism, imagery, and the anthropology of place.
£84.60
University of Washington Press Pacific Voices: Keeping Our Cultures Alive
The groundbreaking "Pacific Voices" exhibit grew out of a five-year collaborative process that brought together members of Washington State's diverse Asian, Pacific Islander, and Native American communities. The exhibition became a vehicle for the expression of a variety of voices exploring sources of cultural identity: objects, rituals, ceremonies, and traditions that both anchor and showcase the ways of life of Pacific Rim communities. Each of the seventeen chapters highlights a unique cultural object: Rose Dang and Thuy Vu see the Vietnamese incense burner as a vehicle for carrying prayers; 'Iwalani Christian calls the Hawaiian pahu "the voice of the gods"; the Reverend Dean Koyama describes the Japanese obutsudan as an altar for remembering loved ones; and Vi Hilbert presents the Coast Salish river canoe as "a place to learn patience." Each vibrant narrative is accompanied by colorful photographs and illustrations, and helpful sidebars provide historical and contextual information. Taken together, the stories in Pacific Voices provide a fresh perspective on the multicultural world in which we live, as well asvaluable insights into the diverse cultures of the Pacific Rim. For more information visit:http://www.burkemuseum.org/exhibits/pacific-voices-0
£30.25
