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January 1, 1993The Journal of Interdisciplinary History950 citations

Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture, and Colonialism in the Pacific

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GWGeoffrey M. WhiteNTNicholas Thomas

Key Points

  • To examine how the exchange of material objects shaped social relations, debt systems, and cultural identity across the colonial and contemporary Pacific.
  • Historical and anthropological analysis of trade systems, valuables, and debt relations in Melanesia, Fiji, and the Marquesas.
  • Qualitative examination of mutual material appropriation between Pacific Islanders and European colonists, traders, and Christian missions.
  • Material exchange functioned as a dynamic process of mutual appropriation rather than a one-sided imposition of European goods.
  • The circulation of specific valuables, such as whale teeth and muskets, transformed indigenous political structures, ritual ceremonies, and systems of reciprocity.

Abstract

Part 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.

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Cite This Study

White et al. (1993) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/6a09e2c787ad1657d251cc63https://doi.org/10.2307/205416
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