The personification of social totalities in the Pacific

Sahlins bases his account of Polynesian 'heroic history' partly on the fact that chiefs used the pronoun 'I' in reference to their whole group. Mosko (1992) argues that Sahlins's consequent emphasis on 'encompassment' as the modality of chiefly action is diametrically opposed to Strathern's on 'partibility', the effacement of parts of the person as a condition of action. Drawing on comparative material from the New Guinea Highlands, where big men also use 'I' for their whole group, and on Benveniste's and Urban's accounts of the meaning and use of personal pronouns, I argue instead that moments of both encompassment and partibility are inherent in language, corresponding to two distinct dimensions in which the pronouns are meaningful (the 'direct indexical' and the 'anaphoric'), and that close attention to the interaction between the two can yield new insights into the nature of personhood and social agency.

The Contemporary Pacific, 2008

Narrative and Identity Construction in the Pacific Islands. Ed. Farzana Gounder, 2015

The Pitkern Norf'k language is one of the outcomes of the mutiny on the Bounty in 1789. When a small group of British sailors and their Tahitian consorts exiled themselves on Pitcairn Island, a new society and a new language, known as Pitkern, emerged within a generation. In 1856 the entire 193 strong population of Pitcairn Island was resettled on Norfolk Island. Several families back-migrated to Pitcairn in the 1860s and the population of Pitcairn is now around 50 people. The variety spoken on Pitcairn is referred to as Pitkern and that on Norfolk Island as Norf'k. They are mutually intelligible dialects of the one language, which can be subsumed under the label Pikern-Norf’k. The inhabitants of both islands continue to feel closely related and contacts are on the rise. These connections are both literal (e.g. cultural and linguistic ties) and mythical (e.g. narrative constructions within the stories shared by the two islands). The Pitkern-Norf’k narratives in this paper are mainly from Norfolk Island. Palmerston English arose in similar circumstances to Pitcairn, when the previously uninhabited Palmerston Island (Cook Islands) was settled by the Englishman William Marsters, his three Cook Islander wives, a Portuguese-Creole-speaking man, and around 10 others not named in records but referred to variously as “Tahitians” or “Cook Islanders from Atiu”. The island now has about 50 inhabitants and is a 3–5 day boat journey from the nearest other inhabited islands. The inhabitants are monolingual speakers of a dialect that shows influence from both William Marsters’ Midlands English dialect and from Cook Island Māori (Hendery, 2012; Hendery & Erhart, 2013). The Palmerston narratives discussed in this paper come from a variety of historical sources, as well as from Hendery’s fieldwork in 2009 and 2013. Our main theoretical point relevant to narrative studies and narrative coherence is that despite the different locations and language histories and influences of our case studies, similar narrative systems have developed which exemplify how insular speech communities interact through stories, language, and group behaviour. The narratives discussed in this paper run the gamut from oral history, to ghost stories, through to ‘small stories’ (conversational, unelicited narratives, c.f. Bamberg & Georgakopoulou, 1998). Our descriptions provide a possible approach to documenting and theorising about island peoples and island languages which may also be applicable to insular communities in other parts of the world. We begin by describing some of the important themes of the narratives of these islands, including idyllicisation, truth and lies, and the ocean. In the second part of the paper we outline some ways in which narrative construction is constrained by the social realities of small communities.

The Contemporary Pacific , 2018

1996

He mild oe Kane; He mild oe Kanaloa. OKane hea oe? o Kanaloa hea oe? OKane inu awa; o Kanaloa inu awa. Mai Kahiki ka awa, Mai U polu ka awa, Mai Wawau ka awa. E hana awa hua, E hano awa pauaka, Halapa i ke akua i laau wai la e! Amama, ua noa, Lele wale aku la ka pule e. You are active, Kane; You are active, Kanaloa.

Over the course of the last century and a half, the structural and political underpinnings of Fijian chieftaincy have changed in significant ways and is no longer best represented by the union of the stranger-chief and local lineage. According to what must be the most widely-accepted origin mythology in present-day Fiji, the first Fijians arrived from Tanganyika, Africa. Emphasising the shared origins of all indigenous Fijians, this mythology denies the internal differentiation between autochthones and strangers that is often highlighted as a key constituent in Fijian political organization. In this ethnographic tradition, it is the " synthetic " combination of foreign charisma and autochthonous legitimation that holds up chieftaincy. Colonial-era Native Legislation reveals us a similar denial of the dichotomy in material and linguistic terms, overriding the distinction between the land-owning autochthones and the landless strangers , respectively designated as the " owners " or " hosts " (taukei) and " strangers " or " guests " (vulagi). This article considers the 2010 governmental decision to replace the words " Fijian " or " native Fijian " with the word iTaukei in official English-language use as merely the most recent example of a development that has been in the making for a considerable while. RÉSUMÉ Au cours du dernier siècle et demi, la structure et les soubassements politiques du système de chefferie de Fidji ont changé de manière significative, et leur meilleure représentation n'est plus l'union de l'étranger-chef avec le lignage local. Selon ce qui est sans doute le mythe des origines le plus largement accepté à Fidji aujourd'hui, les premiers Fidjéens arrivèrent de Tanganyika, en Afrique. Mettant l'accent sur les origines partagées de tous les Fidjéens, ce mythe nie la distinction interne entre autochtones et étrangers – distinction souvent présentée comme un constituant clef de l'organisa-tion politique de Fidji. Dans cette tradition, c'est la combinaison « synthétique » entre le charisme étran-ger et la légitimité autochtone qui définit la chefferie. La législation autochtone de l'ère coloniale nie égale-ment la dichotomie matérielle et linguistique entre les propriétaires fonciers autochtones et les étrangers sans terre, respectivement désignés comme « propriétaires » (taukei) et « hôtes » (vulagi). Cet article se penche sur la décision gouvernementale de 2010 de remplacer les mots « Fidjian » ou « Native Fidjian » par le mot iTaukei en anglais officiel – une décision qui n'est que l'exemple le plus récent d'un développement qui est en cours depuis longtemps.

Pacific Affairs, 2002

Language in Society, 2012

Many societies in Polynesia and Oceania more broadly are thoroughly and rigidly hierarchical. The language used by the people in those societies encodes and recreates this social hierarchy in a variety of interesting ways, thus providing fertile ground for the exploration of language (and other) ideologies in linguistic (and other) cultural practices. Indeed, some well-known works on the interactions between language and culture in Oceania have made major contributions to sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology generally, for example, Duranti (1994) on Western Samoa and Keating (1998) on Pohnpeian. The rigid social hierarchy of the Polynesian nation of Tonga is also reflected in language use and other cultural practices, and Svenja Völkel's new monograph makes a fine contribution to this literature by focusing on the specific issues of social structure, space and place, possession and gift exchange, and the "language of respect" in Tonga. Völkel addresses these topics from the complementary perspectives of linguistic and cultural anthropology on the one hand, and a more descriptive linguistic approach on the other. The book is thus divided into two major sections, the first addressing anthropological aspects of the subject matter (social structure, land and the symbolic meaning of space, and possession and gift exchange), while the second focuses more on linguistic aspects (spatial descriptions, so-called A-and O-possession, and the Tongan language of respect). In Part 1, Ch. 2 introduces the important social structures that form the foundation for understanding the topics to be developed later. Drawing heavily on previous ethnographic research (but including her own observations in key places), Völkel identifies two major levels of social structure in Tongan society. The first pertains to kinship and the domestic sphere (social status) and the second to relationships within the society as a whole (societal ranking). In order to elucidate how Tongans use different conceptions of social status and societal ranking, Völkel provides a thorough overview of Tongan kinship terminology, explaining that all societal relationships hinge on the possession of mana, or spiritual power tied to the gods, which is present in all things to varying degrees. On the societal level,

Culture and History in the Pacific

This review article analyses representations of Polynesian pasts, discourses surrounding the concepts of history, culture and tradition, describing historiographical projects of Pacific islanders. The article highlights the complex relationship between oral traditions and written historical accounts, and the politics of representation of these projects.