Gender and Historical
Anthropology:
History of the South Pacific
History 675B
University of Hawai’i at
Manoa
Department of History
Graduate Seminar 1998, Spring Semester
Time:Wednesday 3.00 - 5.30,
Location: SAK A204
Margaret Jolly (Burns Distinguished Visitor Chair in
History)
Office: Sakamaki A-403
Tel: 808-956-7688, email jolly@hawaii.edu
Consultation Hours: Wednesday 12-2, Thursday 12-2, and by
appointment
Introduction
Gender is a contested concept, especially in
the fluid terrain of the historical anthropology of the Pacific.
Although gender was, from the late 1960s, a term primarily
deployed by feminist scholars its currency is now very wide in
academic and everyday conversation. Despite the common slippage
from ‘gender’ to ‘women’, in this course we
will consider both women and men and the changing relations
between them and explore how gender works as a code as well as
being a way of designating persons.
We will start by exploring the related concepts
of gender, sex and sexuality in cross-cultural contexts, and
especially across the Pacific. We will look at the particular
problems posed by ‘pollution’ and by tattooing in
thinking about indigenous gender relations, their interpretation
by foreigners, and their historical transformation. We will
ponder the ways in which gender inflects the telling, the writing
and the reading of history and of ethnography. Then we will
consider a series of topics with a roughly chronological flow,
tracing changing gender relations in several contexts of colonial
history and cross-cultural encounter: exploratory voyages,
missionary projects and Christian conversions, the trade in
labour, the experience of depopulation, colonial and postcolonial
states, global war and militarization, development projects and
the representations of the Pacific in travel writing, fictions
and film.
We will be constantly traversing the Pacific
from east to west, from Hawai’i to Papua New Guinea. We will
also be crossing the conventional academic boundaries of history
and anthropology. We will be focusing our attention on some
primary historical sources but reading these alongside later
interpretations and contemporary theoretical texts. The course
will be demanding but I hope exciting for us. In all our
conversations I want to sustain a sense of the critical problems
in conjoining indigenous and foreign in Pacific historical
anthropology, in a way which is sensitive to the politics of
knowledge, and to the way pasts and presents flow into each
other, a ‘double helix’, in Greg Dening’s image.
Books for Purchase
The following texts are suggested
for students to purchase. They provide background reading to the
course and will be used at several points as the basis of seminar
topics and essays. I have with one exception selected books which
are available in cheaper, paperback editions.
Gell, Alfred 1993. Wrapping in
Images: Tattooing in Polynesia. Oxford:Clarendon Press.
Paperback edition, 1996.
Forster, Johann Reinhold Forster
1996. [1778] Observations on a Voyage Around the World.
Edited by Nicholas Thomas, Harriet Guest and Michael Dettlebach.
Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
Manderson, Lenore and Margaret
Jolly (eds) 1997. Sites of Desire, Economies of Pleasure.
Sexualities in Asia and the Pacific. Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press.
Strathern, Marilyn 1988. The
Gender of the Gift. Problems with Women and Problems with Society
in Melanesia. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Paperback edition.
Thomas, Nicholas 1995. Oceanic
Art. London: Thames and Hudson.
Course Requirements and
Assessment
I want to discuss and finalise
this in our first session, but what I propose is as follows. All
students will be required to attend the weekly seminar and to
read and discuss core reading for all seminars. I suggest
that you keep a reading book in hard copy or electronic form
summarising core reading for all seminar topics. This will be
crucial in your reading assessment worth 10% of the
total. This will be a weekly summary of core reading
for weeks 2-14, for ten topics you are not doing as an essay.
It should be about 250-300 words each week and is due at the
relevant seminar. Attendance and participation at seminars
will be assessed as 10% of the final total.In addition I
propose two major essays. A first essay of 3,000 words
based on one of the seminar themes, 2-5 and due by April 1st will
be worth 30% of the assessment. Students will be
asked to lead the seminar discussions with short presentations
(5-10 minutes) on their chosen topics from weeks 2-5 which should
review only core reading. They will then be asked to lead the
discussion again on a topic of their choice between 6-14, again
on core reading only (about 20 minutes). This will be the basis
of another essay of 4,000 words based on one of the themes from
6-14, and developed from the discussion at the seminar. It is
worth 40% of assessment and is due two weeks after your
seminar presentation or if you prefer by April 29th
at the latest. Essays should be based on core and recommended
reading set, but students should feel free to explore the library
for other sources and to pose a question appropriate to their own
interests, in consultation with me.
Late essays will not be
accepted unless there is a compelling medical or personal reason,
attested by a medical certificate or other appropriate
documentation.
Availability of Books and
Papers
We will try to supply all copies
of the core reading which are not from the books for purchase on
sale at the University Bookstore. All core and recommended
reading will be available either in reserve at the Sinclair
Library or in the case of books or papers from the Pacific
collection from the circulation desk on the fifth floor, Hamilton
library. These latter titles will need to be consulted there, and
you will need to come prepared with book title, call number, your
ID card and to quote the seminar title and number and my name. We
will, at the start of the seminar, provide a list of all books
listed with locations and call numbers.
If you have any problems in
finding set readings please contact either myself or Kerri
Inglis, the teaching assistant, who is in Room B413, Tel
956-6925.
1. Week One, January 14th
Orientations: Meetings and
Greetings.
We will begin with introductions
and organising our meetings and work for the semester. I want
this session mainly to be dedicated to getting to know each
other. I am new to teaching in Hawai’i, and indeed to
graduate teaching in the North American context. I’ll give
you a sense of what I teach and research, especially in my
present job convening the Gender Relations Project at the
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, ANU and in
supervising graduate scholars there. But primarily I would like
to find out more about you, your overall study programme and how
this course fits into that and future plans. So come prepared to
do this. I also want to go through this course guide with you,
sorting out any questions, ambiguities or problems about the
curriculum, availability of books and assessment.
2. Week Two, January 21st
What is Gender? Pacific and
EuroAmerican Meanings
Hopefully in the following week we
can start with a discussion of some questions such as the
following. Is sex difference a universal? What about
transexuality and transvestism? What is the relation between the
concepts of gender, sex and sexuality? Is it helpful to
distinguish sex as biologically given and gender as culturally
and historically constructed? How do heterosexual and homosexual
practices relate to sexual identities? Do Pacific notions of
gender and sexuality differ from EuroAmerican ones in important
ways? How have Pacific and EuroAmerican notions of gender and
sexuality influenced each other?
Core Reading
Besnier, Niko 1994. Polynesian
gender liminality in time and space. In Gilbert Herdt (ed.) Third
Sex,Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorprhism in Culture and
History. New York: Zone Books, 285-328.
Clark, Jeffrey 1997. State of
Desire:Transformations in Huli Sexuality. In Lenore Manderson and
Margaret Jolly (eds) Sites of Desire, Economies of Pleasure.
Sexualities in Asia and the Pacific. Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 191-211.
Gatens, Moira 1983. A critique of
the sex/gender distinction. In Sneja Gunew (ed.) A Reader in
Feminist Knowledge. London and New York: Routledge, 139-157.
Jackson, Peter 1997.
Kathoey><Gay><Man: the Historical Emergence of Gay
Male Identity in Thailand. In Lenore Manderson and Margaret Jolly
(eds) Sites of Desire, Economies of Pleasure. Sexualities in
Asia and the Pacific. Chicago and London: University of
Chicago Press, 166-190.
Jolly, Margaret and Lenore
Manderson 1997. Introduction. Sites of Desire/Economies of
Pleasure in Asia and the Pacific. In Lenore Manderson and
Margaret Jolly (eds) Sites of Desire, Economies of Pleasure.
Sexualities in Asia and the Pacific. Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1-26.
Martin, Emily 1991. The egg and
the sperm: how science has constructed a romance based on the
stereotypical male-female roles. Signs: Journal of Women in
Culture and Society 16(3):485-501.
Recommended Reading
Jolly, Margaret 1992. Partible
persons and multiple authors. [A review of Marilyn
Strathern’s The Gender of the Gift.]. Pacific
Studies Book Review Forum, 15(1):137-149. See
also reviews by Paula Brown and Roger Keesing and Marilyn
Strathern’s response, 123-137, 149-159.
Strathern, Marilyn 1988. The
Gender of the Gift. Problems with Women and Problems with Society
in Melanesia. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Nicholson, Linda 1994.
Interpreting gender. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and
Society. 20(11):79-105.
Trask, Haunani-Kay 1986. Eros
and Power: The Promise of Feminist Theory. Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press.
3. Week Three January 28th
The Sexed Body - Pollution -
A Problem in Cross-Cultural Interpretation
In the historical anthropology of
the Pacific, there is a protracted debate about the way to
interpret the practices which are variously called kapu, tapu,
abu. Such restrictions, based on gender and rank segregations
were/are found in many Polynesian islands, but also in the
Solomons and elsewhere in Melanesia. Are such ideas and practices
best translated in terms of purity and pollution or of sacred
danger? Evaluate Hanson and Ralston’s critiques of the
notion of ‘pollution’.What are the differences between
Linnekin and Valeri on kapu in Hawaii? Are there important
differences as well as similarities in these practices across the
Pacific, in the way in which gender and rank are related for
instance? Do these practices suggest a profound difference in the
way in which male and female bodies were/are perceived? How were
such practices interpreted by foreigners, especially
missionaries?What were the dynamics in the abolition or
transformation of such practices? Assess Sahlin’s (1985)
argument for Hawaii and Keesing’s arguments for the Kwaio in
the Solomons, focusing on the effects of more recent Christian
conversion in the latter.
Hanson, F. Allan 1982. Female
Pollution in Polynesia? Journal of the Polynesian Society.
91:335-381.
Keesing, Roger 1985. Kwaio Women
Speak: The Micropolitics of Autobiography in a Solomon Island
Society. American Anthropologist 87:27-39.
Linnekin, Jocelyn 1990. Sacred
Queens and Women of Consequence. Rank, Gender and Colonialism in
the Hawaiian Islands. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan
Press, esp. p. 13-73.
Ralston, Caroline 1988.
‘Polyandry’, ‘Pollution’,
‘Prostitution’: The Problems of Eurocentrism and
Andocentrism in Polynesian Studies. In Barbara Caine, Elizabeth
Grosz and Marie de Lepervanche (eds) Crossing Boundaries:
Feminisms and the Critique of Knowledges. Sydney: Allen and
Unwin, 71-81.
Sahlins, Marshall 1985. Islands
of History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Ch 5.
Recommended Reading.
Ralston, Caroline 1989. Changes in
the Lives of Ordinary Women in Early Post-Contact Hawaii In
Margaret Jolly and Martha Macintyre (eds) Family and Gender in
the Pacific: Domestic Contradictions and the Colonial Impact.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 45-64.
Ralston, Caroline and Nicholas
Thomas (eds) 1987. Sanctity and Power: Gender in Polynesian
History The Journal of Pacific History, Special Issue, 22.
See especially Introduction, 115-22.
Thomas, Nicholas 1989. Blood and
Purity: A Comment on the Interpretation of Polynesian Culture. Journal
of the Polynesian Society, 98: 207-211.
Valeri, Valerio 1985. Kingship
and Sacrifice: Ritual and Society in Ancient Hawaii.
Chicago:University of Chicago Press.
Valeri, Valerio 1990. Blood and
Purity: A Countercomment on Insufficient Scholarship and More
Interesting Matters. Journal of the Polynesian Society.
99: 319-24.
4. Week Four February 4th
The Sexed Body - Tattooing -
A Problem in Cross-Cultural Interpretation
The word tattooing in English of
course has its origin in a Pacific word and practice, common but
not universal in the region. What do you think of Gell’s
attempt to explain the differences between tattooing practices
across the Pacific, on the basis of gender and rank? Evaluate his
more general approach to tattooing and the meanings of the
practice forEuroAmericans. Are there gender dynamics in its
contemporary revival?
Core Reading
Gell, Alfred 1996 [1993]. Wrapping
in Images: Tattooing in Polynesia. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Guest, Harriet 1992. Curiously
Marked: Tattooing, Masculinity, and Nationality in Eighteenth
Century British Perceptions of the South Pacific. In John Barrell
(ed.) Painting and the Politics of Culture: New Essays on
British Art, 1700-1850. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
101-134.
Thomas, Nicholas 1995. Oceanic
Art. London: Thames and Hudson, esp p. 99-114.
Recommended Reading
Guest, Harriet 1989. The Great
Distinction: Figures of the Exotic in the Work of William Hodges.
Oxford Art Journal 12:36-58.
P.F. Kwiatkowski 1996. The Hawaiian
Tattoo. Kahola: Halona Inc. Illustrations by Tom O’o
Mehau.
Keppler, Adrienne 1988. Hawaiian
Tattoo: A Conjunction of Genealogy and Aesthetics. In A. Rubin
(ed.) Marks of Civilization: Artistic Transformation of the
Human Body. Los Angeles: Museum of Natural History.
Simmons, D. 1986. Ta Moko: The
Art of Maori Tattoo. Auckland: Reed Methuen.
Thomas, Nicholas 1997. Marked Men.
Art Asia Pacific 13:66-73.
5. Week Five February 11th
Memories - Engendering pasts
in presents
History is more than just the
academic discipline which bears that name, it is the process of
telling pasts in presents, the way in which memories circulate in
words, in places and things. There is often a contrast drawn
between Pacific and EuroAmerican ways of making history - between
histories which are embodied, in stories, spoken and sung, in
landscape, artifacts and bodies, as against history which is
‘written down’ in texts. Dening, amongst others,
implies that this distinction is overdrawn since not only do
Pacific islanders write histories but EuroAmericans tell stories,
perform the past in places, monuments, artifacts even bodies.
But, given this broader notion of histories how might we engender
memories?
What is the significance of the
gender of the observer or narrator in memory-work? Are women and
men equally empowered to tell such stories? Is women’s
history different from men’s history? Consider the claim by
Jolly that some feminist histories of white women in the colonies
are recuperative. How do present predicaments about gender affect
how we engender stories of the past? What is the relation between
writing gender in ethnography and history?
Core Reading
Beirsack, Aletta 1991.
Introduction In Aletta Biersack (ed.) Clio in Oceania: Towards
an Historical Anthropology. Washington: Smithsonian
Institution Press, 1-36.
Dening, Greg 1991. A Poetics for
Histories: Transformations that Present the Past. In Aletta
Biersack (ed.) Clio in Oceania: Towards an Historical
Anthropology. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press,
347-380.
Jolly, Margaret 1993. Colonizing
Women: the maternal body and empire. In Sneja Gunew and Anna
Yeatman (eds) Feminism and the Politics of Difference.
Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 103-127.
Thomas, Nicholas. 1997 Partial
Texts: Representation, Colonialism and Agency in Pacific History.
In Oceania: Visions, Artifacts, Histories. Duke University
Press: Durham and London, 23-49.
Recommended Reading
Borofsky, Robert 1990. Making
History:Pukapukan and Anthropological Constructions of Knowledge.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Esp. Chs 1 and 5.
Moore, Henrietta L. 1988 Feminism
and Anthropology. Oxford:Basil Blackwell, 1-41.
Moore, Henrietta L. 1994 A
Passion for Difference: Essays in Anthropology and Gender.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 49-70.
Scott, Joan 1986. Gender: A Useful
Category of Historical Analysis. American Historical Review
91(5):1053-1075.
White, Geoffrey 1992. Identity
through History: Living Stories in a Solomon Island Society.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
6. Week Six February 18th
Explorations - Constructing
Race and Gender in the Pacific
In some of the earliest European
explorations of the Pacific, distinctions were made between
different peoples on the basis of race or nation. Although the
terms Melanesia and Polynesia were not coined until 1832 by
Dumont d’Urville there were early distinctions drawn between
the peoples of the eastern and western islands. Gender was
crucial to this process, since not only were perceptions of the
position of women used to rank peoples, but also gender worked as
a code to distinguish people by island and by rank. What were the
racial distinctions plotted by Johann Reinhold Forster in his Observations?
Were they similar to those of Cook? How did his
representations between women in the west and the east differ?
How far do these seem based on indigenous realities, how far on
European visions? How were gender relations amongst Maori
perceived? How does this compare with Tahiti and/ or the New
Hebrides (now Vanuatu). How do the representation of gender in
the texts and the visual images compare, for the same islands?
Core Reading
Forster, Johann Reinhold Forster
1996. [1778] Observations on a Voyage Around the World.
Edited by Nicholas Thomas, Harriet Guest and Michael Dettlebach.
Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Esp. 142-267.
Guest, Harriet 1996. Looking at
Women: Forster’s Observations in the South Pacific. In
Johann Reinhold Forster 1996. [1778] Observations on a Voyage
Around the World. Edited by Nicholas Thomas, Harriet Guest
and Michael Dettlebach. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i
Press, p. xli-liv.
Jolly, Margaret 1992.
"Ill-natured Comparisons": Racism and Relativism in
Euopean Representations of ni-Vanuatu from Cook’s Second
Voyage. History and Anthropology 5:331-363.
Thomas, Nicholas 1996. Johann
Reinhold Forster and His Observations. And "On the
Varieties of the Human Species": Forster’s Comparative
Ethnology. In Johann Reinhold Forster 1996. [1778]
Observations on a Voyage Around the World. Edited by Nicholas
Thomas, Harriet Guest and Michael Dettelbach. Honolulu:
University of Hawai’i Press, p. xv-xl.
Recommended Reading
Cook, James. 1961. The Journals
of Captain James Cook on His Voyages of Discovery. The Voyage of
the Resolution and Adventure, 1775. Edited by J. C.
Beaglehole. London: Hakluyt Society XXXV, Pages to be advised.
Smith, Bernard 1985 [1960]. European
Vision and the South Pacific. Revised second edition. New
York: Esp. Chapters 2, 3, 4, 5 and 11.
Thomas, Nicholas 1989 The Force of
Ethnology: Origins and Significance of the Melanesia/Polynesia
Division. Current Anthropology 30:27-34. Or the later
version Thomas 1997, see below.
Thomas, Nicholas 1997. Melanesians
and Polynesians: Ethnic Typifications inside and outside
Anthropology. In In Oceania: Visions, Artifacts, Histories.
Duke University Press: Durham and London, 133-155.
7. Week Seven,
February 25th
Gendered Labour
Indigenous societies in the
Pacific all constructed differences between men’s work and
women’s work, although the patterns of the sexual division
of labour differed dramatically between the western and the
eastern Pacific. The introduction of plantation labour and the
patterns of labour recruiting or ‘blackbirding’ created
a new gendered division of labour in many Pacific societies. In
many plantation sites, in Queensland, Fiji and New Caledonia men
vastly outnumbered women. Yet in other sites the ratios of men
and women were roughly equal. How far did this derive from the
nature of the societies from which labourers came or the racial
relations prevailing in the country of the plantation? What did
demographic imbalances between men and women entail? In what way
did the position of women labourers differ from that of men? How
did this bear on relations with planters, overseers and bosses?
In the intense controversy as to whether such labourers were
volunteers or slaves are men and women represented differently?
Jolly, Margaret 1987. The
Forgotten Women: a history of migrant labour and gender relations
in Vanuatu. Oceania 58(2):119-139.
Kelly, John 1997. Gaze and Grasp:
Plantations, Desires, Indentured Indians and Colonial Law in
Fiji. In Lenore Manderson and Margaret Jolly (eds) Sites of
Desire, Economies of Pleasure. Sexualities in Asia and the
Pacific. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press,
72-98.
Lal, Brij 1985. Kunti’s Cry:
Indentured Women on Fiji Plantations. Indian Economic and
Social History Review 22:55-71.
Lal, Brij 1985. Veil of Dishonour:
Sexual Jealousy and Suicide on Fiji Plantations. The Journal
of Pacific History 20:135-155.
Recommended Reading
Kelly, John 1991. A Politics of
Virtue: Hinduism, sexuality and countercolonial discourse in
Fiji. Chicago:Chicago University Press.
Moore, Clive 1985. Kanaka: A
History of Melanesian Mackay. Port Moresby: Institute of
Papua New Guinea Studies and University of Papua New Guinea
Press.
Saunders, Kay 1980. Melanesian
Women in Queensland, 1863-1907: some methodological problems
involving the relationship between racism and sexism. Pacific
Studies 4(1): 26-44.
Saunders, Kay 1982. Workers in
Bondage: the origins and bases of unfree labour in Queenland,
1824-1916. Brisbane: University of Queensland Press.
8. Week Eight, March 4th
Engendering Missionary
Presence
Christian conversion was pervasive
throughout the Pacific and most Pacific Islanders are today
practising Christians. Both foreign and Islander missionaries
were critical agents in the transformation of indigenous patterns
of gender relations, although their programs of reform often
failed or had partial effects. Moreover indigenous appropriations
often effected changes in different directions. Such changes have
been most discussed in terms of women’s lives. Can we
construct a process of ‘domestication’ of Pacific women
as a result of missionary efforts? How far did the missionaries
emphasise women’s status as wives rather than sisters? Can
we describe missionary-influenced patterns of change as either
improvement or deterioration in women’s lives? What of the
effects on men of missionary efforts, especially in relation to
pacification and conversion and the attenuation of the power of
indigenous chiefs, warriors and priests? What was the relation
between women and men in the new churches? Did this differ
fundamentally between different denominations.
Dureau, Christine 1998. From
Sisters to Wives: In Kalpana Ram and Margaret Jolly (eds) Maternities
and Modernities: Colonial and Postcolonial Experiences in Asia
and the Pacific. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
239-274.
Gailey, Christine Ward 1980.
Putting down sisters and wives: Tongan women and colonization. In
Mona Etienne and Eleanor Leacock (eds) Women and Colonization.
New York: Praeger, 294-322.
Grimshaw, Patricia 1989. New
England missionary wives, Hawaiian women and ‘The Cult of
True Womanhood’ In Margaret Jolly and Martha Macintyre (eds)
Family and Gender in the Pacific: Domestic Contradictions and
the Colonial Impact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
19-44.
Jolly, Margaret 1991. ‘To
Save the Girls for Brighter and Better Lives’: Presbyterian
Missions and Women in the South of Vanuatu, 1848-1870. The
Journal of Pacific History 26(1):27-48.
Jolly, Margaret 1989. Sacred
Spaces: Churches, Men’s Houses and Households in South
Pentecost, Vanuatu. In Margaret Jolly and Martha Macintyre (eds) Family
and Gender in the Pacific: Domestic Contradictions and the
Colonial Impact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
213-235.
Langmore Diane 1989. The object
lesson of a civilised, Christian home. In Margaret Jolly and
Martha Macintyre (eds) Family and Gender in the Pacific:
Domestic Contradictions and the Colonial Impact. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 84-94.
Thomas, Nicholas 1992. Colonial
conversions: difference, hierarchy and history in early twentieth
century evenagelical propaganda. Comparative Studies in
Society and History 34(2):366-389.
Recommended Reading
Diaz, Vincente 1993. Pious Sites:
Chamorro Culture at the Crossroads of Spanish Catholicism and
American Liberalism. In Amy Kaplan and Donald Pease (ed.) Cultures
of United States Imperialism. Ralegh: 312-339.
Grimshaw, Patricia 1989. Paths
Of Duty: American Missionary Wives in Nineteenth-Century Hawaii.
Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Hall, Catherine 1991. Missionary
Stories: Gender and Ethnicity in England in the 1830s and 1840s.
In Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson and Paula A. Triechler (eds) Cultural
Studies. New York, 240-276.
Jolly, Margaret and Martha
Macintyre (eds) Family and Gender in the Pacific: Domestic
Contradictions and the Colonial Impact. Cambridge:Cambridge
University Press. Esp Introduction and Chs 8, 10.
Langmore, Diane 1989. Missionary
Lives. Papua, 1874-1914. Pacific Islands Monograph Series, No
6. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press/Center for Pacific
Islands Studies.
Thorne, Susan 1997. ‘The
Conversion of Englishmen and the Conversion of the World
Inseparable’: Missionary Imperialism and the Language of
Class in Early Industrial Britain. In Frederick Cooper and Ann
Laura Stoler (eds) Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a
Bourgeois World. Berkeley: University of California Press,
238-262.
9. Week Nine, March 11th
Depopulation: Colonial
States and the Gender of the Dying Race
In the wake of the first
explorers, traders and missionaries, Pacific people suffered
catastrophically from the impact of introduced diseases. The
extent and the nature of depopulation has been much debated and
will continue to be so in places like Hawai’i, New Zealand
and Australia as well as the independent states of the Pacific.
At the time of the greatest depopulation controversy raged as to
the relative contribution of exogenous and indigenous causes.
Although many European settlers awaited and indeed welcomed the
end of the ‘dying race’, missionaries and colonial
states were engaged in projects to arrest depopulation. Such
efforts were probably most developed in Fiji, where indigenous
mothers were singled out for blame and where they were drawn into
projects of public health and sanitation and ‘reforms’
of mothering. What did this imply for fathers? Were responses to
depopulation in other islands similar? Were men and women
represented differently in the debates about ‘the dying
race’. And how did these debates in the Pacific echo
concerns in Europe?
Bushnell, Andrew F. 1993.
‘The Horror’ reconsidered: an evaluation of the
historical; evidence for population decline in Hawai’i,
1778-1803. Pacific Studies 16(3): 115-162.
Jolly, Margaret 1998. Other
mothers: maternal insouciance and the depopulation debate in
Vanuatu and Fiji. In Kalpana Ram and Margaret Jolly (eds) Maternities
and Modernities: Colonial and Postcolonial Experiences in Asia
and the Pacific. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
177-212.
Jolly, Margaret 1996. Desire,
difference and disease. Sexual and venereal exchanges on
Cook’s voyages in the Pacific. In Ross Gibson (ed.) Exchanges.
Sydney: Museum of Sydney, 187-217.
Reed, Adam 1997. Contested Images
and Common Strategies: Early Colonial Sexual Politics in the
Massim. In Lenore Manderson and Margaret Jolly (eds) 1997. Sites
of Desire, Economies of Pleasure. Sexualities in Asia and the
Pacific. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 48-71.
Stannard, David E. 1989 Before
the Horror: The Population of Hawai’i on the Eve of Western
Contact. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
Recommended Reading
Davin, Anna 1997. [1978]
Imperialism and Motherhood. In Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura
Stoler (eds) Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a
Bourgeois World. Berkeley: University of California Press,
87-151.
Decrease Report. 1896. Report
of the Commission Appointed to Inquire into the Decrease of the
Native Population. Suva: Government Printer.
Mc Arthur, Norma 1967. Island
Populations of the Pacific. Canberra: The Australian National
University Press.
Rallu, Jean-Louis 1991. Population
of the French Overseas Territories in the Pacific past, present
and future. The Journal of Pacific History 26(2):169-186.
Thomas, Nicholas 1990. Sanitation
and seeing: the creation of state power in early colonial Fiji. Comparative
Studies in Society and History 32:149-170.
10. Week Ten, March 18th
Gendered Agendas in Travel
Writing
Travel writers have been crucial
in constructing images of the Pacific. Often such travel writers
combined documentary journalism with writing novels and romances,
as was the case with Beatrice Grimshaw. How are these genres of
writing related in her corpus? Consider the salience of sexuality
and her gender in Grimshaw’s travel writing. Compare her
representations of Polynesian and Melanesian women with that of
the Cook voyages. How far might the divergent portraits relate to
the imperatives of tourism versus white settlement? How do her
portraits of the eastern and western Pacific compare with those
in her novels?
Core Reading
Grimshaw, Beatrice. 1907. In
the Strange South Seas. London: Hutchinson and Company.
Grimshaw, Beatrice 1907. From
Fiji to the Cannibal Islands. London: Hutchinson and Company.
Jolly, Margaret 1997. From Point
Venus to Bali Ha’i: Eroticism and Exoticism in
Representations of the Pacific. In Lenore Manderson and Margaret
Jolly (eds) 1997. Sites of Desire, Economies of Pleasure.
Sexualities in Asia and the Pacific. Chicago:University of
Chicago Press, 99-122.
Jolly, Margaret 1993. Colonizing
Women: the Maternal Body and Empire. In Sneja Gunew and Anna
Yeatman (eds) Feminism and the Politics of Difference.
Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 103-127.
Recommended Reading
Gardner, S. 1977. For love and
money: Early writings of Beatrice Grimshaw, Colonial Papua’s
woman of letters. New Literature Review 1:10-36.
Gardner, S. 1989-88. A
"’vert to Australianism" : Beatrice Grimshaw and
the Bicentenary. Hecate 13(2):31-68.
Grimshaw, Beatrice 1922. My
South Sea Sweetheart. London: Hurst and Blackett.
Grimshaw, Beatrice 1922. Conn
of the Coral Seas. London: Hurst and Blackett.
Laracy, Eleanor and Laracy, Hugh
1977. Beatrice Grimshaw: Pride and prejudice in Papua. Journal
of Pacific History 12(3):154-175.
Pratt, Mary Louis 1992. Imperial
Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London and New
York: Routledge.
11. Week Eleven April 1st
Men, Women and the
Militarization of the Pacific
Foreign strategic and military
interest in the Pacific reached a zenith in World War Two. The
war initiated the nuclear era in the Pacific, and the the
politics of independence of states was caught up with
anti-nuclear issues. How might we read the indigenous and foreign
histories of World War Two in gendered ways? Did World War Two
have differential impacts on men and women in the Pacific?
Consider both the oral histories and the photographs in White and
Lindstrom’s collections in this regard. Do some questions
emerge from the photographs which are not discussed in the texts?
How did the Pacific war reshape notions of masculinity in the
different islands of the Pacific? How did notions of brotherhood
between indigenous men and American troops inflect the politics
of decolonization and independence in the western Pacific, in
Vanuatu and the Solomons particularly? How did the militarization
of the Pacific in World War Two and beyond relate to earlier
EuroAmerican ideas of the Pacific as a site of both sexual and
military conquest? How is the Pacific war represented in the
movie South Pacific? Evaluate Teaiwa’s argument about
the connection between the two bikinis.
Jolly, Margaret 1997. From Point
Venus to Bali Ha’i: Eroticism and Exoticism in
Representations of the Pacific. In Lenore Manderson and Margaret
Jolly (eds) 1997. Sites of Desire, Economies of Pleasure.
Sexualities in Asia and the Pacific. Chicago:University of
Chicago Press, 99-122.
Teaiwa, Teresia 1994. Bikinis and
other s/pacific n/oceans. The Contemporary Pacific.
6(1):87-109.
White, Geoffrey and Lamont
Lindstrom (eds) 1989. The Pacific Theatre: Island
Representations of World War II. Pacific Island Monograph
Series, No 8. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, Center
for Pacific Island Studies. Especially Chapters 1, 2, 3, 11, 13
and 17.
Recommended Reading
Ferguson, Kathy E. and Phyllis Turnbull
1997. Military Presence/Missionary Past: The Historical
Construction of Masculine Order and Feminine Hawai’i. In
Joyce N. Chinen, Kathleen O. Kane and Ida M. Yoshinaga (eds) Women
in Hawai’i: Sites, Identities and Voices. Social Process
Special issue, Vol 38.
Keesing, Roger M. 1978.
Politico-Religious Movements and Anticolonialism on Malaita:
Maasina Rule in Historical Perspective. Oceania
48:241-261; 49:46-73.
Lamont Lindstrom and Geoffrey M.
White 1990. Island Encounters: Black and White Memories of the
Pacific War. Smithsonian Institution Press: Washington and
London
Ravuvu, Asesela 1974. Fijians
at War. Suva: Institute of Pacific Studies.
Worsley, Peter 1968. The
Trumpet Shall Sound: A Study of ‘Cargo’ Cults’ in
Melanesia. Second augmented edition. New York: Schocken
Books.
12.Week Twelve April 8th
Gender in Contemporary
Writing and Art from the Pacific
Gender relations are much
represented and debated in the contemporary Pacific in artistic
genres- in novels, short stories, poetry, plays, paintings and
sculptures. Compare how women are represented by male authors and
artists and how men are represented by female authors and artists
in works from Hawai'i, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Samoa,
Solomons or Vanuatu. How are relations between men and women
portrayed? Are there differences between different countries? Do
you detect different male and female voices or views? How is
gender connected to constructs of tradition (kastom) and
modernity in these different works.
Core Reading
Billy, Afu 1983. ‘Against My
Will’. In Afu Billy, Hazel Lulei and Jully Sipolo (eds) Mi
Mere: Poetry and Prose by Solomons Islands Women Writers.
Honiara: University of the South Pacific, Solomon Islands Centre.
Grace, Patricia 1982, A Way of
Talking. In Witi Ihimaera and D. S. Long (ed.) Into the World
of Light: An Anthology of Maori Writing. Auckland, 198-202.
Hereniko, Vilsoni and Teresia
Teaiwa 1993. Last Virgin in Paradise: A Serious Comedy. Scene
III. Manoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing. 5:
193-203.
Hulme, Keri 1986. While My Guitar
Gently Sings. In Keri Hulme Te Kaihau=the Windeater. St.
Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 107-117.
Mera Molisa, Grace 1983.
‘Black Stone’, ‘Victim of Foreign Abuse’
‘Traditional Leaders’, ‘Custom’‘Vatu
Invocation’ and ‘Other People’. In Black Stone:
Poems by Grace Mera Molisa, 8-11, 12-13, 24-5, 38-39, 66-8.
Suva: Mana Publications.
Mera Molisa, Grace 1987.
‘Colonised People’, ‘Integration of Women’
and ‘Vanuatu’. In Colonised People: Poems by Grace
Mera Molisa. Port Vila: Black Stone Publications, 9-13,14-15,
23.
Mera Molisa, Grace 1989.
‘Delightful Acquiescence, ‘Village Women’,
‘Women’, ‘Men’. In Black Stone II: Poems
by Grace Mera Molisa. Port Vila: Black Stone Publications,
24, 29,32-3.
Sipolo, Jully 1981. ‘A
Man’s World’ and ‘Civilized Girl’. In Civilized
Girl: Poems by Jully Sipolo. Suva: 10, 21.
Sipolo, Jully 1986. ‘Wife
Bashing’ and ‘Urban Life’. In Praying Parents:
A Second Collection of Poems by Jully Sipolo. Honiara: 12-13,
31-2.
Waim Kagl, Toby 1987. Extract from
Kallan. In Ganga Powell (ed.) Through Melanesian Eyes:
An Anthology of Papua New Guinea Writing. Melbourne: 35-44.
Wendt, Albert 1987. ‘A
Talent’. In The Birth and Death of the Miracle Man: A
Collection of Short Stories. Harmondsworth.
Recommended Reading
Jolly, Margaret 1991. The Politics
of Difference: Feminism, Colonialism and Decolonisation in
Vanuatu. In Gillian Bottomley, Marie de Lepervanche and Jeannie
Martin (eds) Intersexions: Gender/Class/ Culture/Ethnicity.
Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 52-74.
13. Week Thirteen April 15th
Engendering Tradition and
Nation
In contemporary debates about
culture, tradition and kastom in the Pacific, there has
been much discussion about the past relations of women and men
and how these bear on the present. Consider similarities and
differences between New Zealand, PNG, Vanuatu, Fiji and
Hawai’i? How far are nationalisms being forged on the basis
of notions of tradition and how far on notions of progress and
modernity? What is the relation between the two? Are men and
women seen as being differently situated in terms of the overused
dichotomy of tradition and modernity? How might the gendered
language of tradition be compared between independent states of
the Pacific and those where indigenous peoples are a minority in
settler colonies dominated by foreigners? How are these claims to
tradition, and to national independence, being affected by the
increasing velocity of the forces of globalization, including the
‘liberalization’ of trade and the promotion of liberal
ideals of democracy, individualism and human rights?
Jolly, Margaret. 1997.
Woman-Nation-State in Vanuatu: Women as Signs and Subjects in the
Discourses of Kastom, Modernity and Christianity. In Ton
Otto and Nicholas Thomas (eds) Narratives of Nation in the
South Pacific, Harwood Academic Publishers: Amsterdam,
133-162.
Jolly, Margaret 1996. Woman
Ikat Raet Long Human Raet O No? Women’s Rights, Human
Rights and Domestic Violence in Vanuatu. Feminist Review
52:169-188.
Kauanui, J. Kehaulani 1998.
Off-Island Hawaiians ‘Making’ Ourselves at
‘Home’. In Kalpana Ram and J. Kehaulani Kauanui (eds) Migrating
Feminisms: the Asia-Pacific Region. Womens Studies International
Forum. Forthcoming,but available with kind permission of the
author.
Sepoe, Orovu. 1994. How democratic
is our democracy? Women and politics in Papua New Guinea. In
‘Atu Emberson-Bain 1994. Sustainable Development or
Malignant Growth?Perspectives of Pacific Island Women. Suva:
Marama Publications, 251-261.
Trask, Haunani-Kay 1993. From a Native
Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignity in Hawai’i.
Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press. Pp. 31-51, 87-125, 263-277.
Trask, Haunani-Kay 1996. Feminism and
Indigenous Hawaiian Nationalism. Signs: Journal of Women in
Culture and Society 21(4):906-916.
Recommended Reading
Foster, Robert (ed.) 1995.
Nation Making: Emergent Identities in Postcolonial Melanesia.
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Jolly, Margaret and Nicholas
Thomas 1992. The Politics of Tradition in the South Pacific.
Oceania Special Issue 62(4). Esp. papers by Foster, Jolly and
Linnekin.
Lawson, Stephanie 1997. The
Tyranny of Tradition: Critical Reflections on Nationalist
Narratives in the South Pacific. In Ton Otto and Nicholas Thomas
(eds) Narratives of Nation in the South Pacific. Harwood
Academic Publishers: Amsterdam, 15-31.
Lawson, Stephanie 1990. The Myth
of Cultural Homogeneity and its Implications for Chiefly Power
and Politics in Fiji. Comparative Studies in Society and
History, 32:795-821.
Ralston, Caroline 1992. The Study
of Women in the Pacific. The Contemporary Pacific.
4:162-175.
Tusitala Marsh, Selina 1998.
Feminism: migrant overstayer or model citizen? In Kalpana Ram and
J. Kehaulani Kauanui (eds) Migrating Feminisms: the
Asia-Pacific Region. Womens Studies International Forum.
Forthcoming, but available with kind permission of the author.
14. Week Fourteen April 22nd
Paradise Lost?: Engendering
Art, Photography and Cinema - EuroAmerican and Island Views
In recent years there has been
much critique of earlier colonial art, photography and film and
the ways in which these are still celebrated in the present.
Gaugin’s corpus in particular has been subject to critical
re-evaluation. Consider his artistic representations of Tahitian
women, and the different interpretations of Eisenman, Perloff,
and Solomon-Godeau.You might like to discuss similar questions in
relation to another colonial artist, photographer or film-maker.
You might consider not just the images but the practices
surrounding such art, photography or cinema. Evaluate some recent
attempts to subvert, transform or erase colonial images by
Pacific artists, photographers and filmmakers.
Core Reading
Eisenman, Stephen F. 1997. Gauguin’s
Skirt. London: Thames and Hudson.
Perloff, Nancy 1995.
Gauguin’s French Baggage: Decadence and Colonialism in
Tahiti. In Elazar Barkan and Ronald Bush (eds) Prehistories of
the Future: The Primitivist Project and the Culture of Modernism.
Stanford: Stanford University Press, 226-269.
Solomon-Godeau, Abigail 1989.
Going Native. Art in America July, 118-128, 161.
Thomas, Nicholas 1996. The dream
of Joseph: debates about identity in Pacific art. From exhibit to
exhibitionism: recent Polynesian presentations of
‘otherness’.The Contemporary Pacific 8:291-317,
319-348.
Webb, Virginia-Lee 1995.
Manipulated Images: European Photographs of Pacific Peoples. In
Elazar Barkan and Ronald Bush (eds) Prehistories of the
Future: The Primitivist Project and the Culture of Modernism.
Stanford: Stanford University Press, 175-201.
Recommended Reading
Gauguin, Paul 1957. Noa noa.
Translated by O.F. Theis and Introduction by Alfred Werner. New
York: vi-xiii, 12-93.
Jolly, Margaret 1998. White
Shadows in the Darkness: Representations of Polynesian Women in
Early Cinema. In Max Quanchi (ed.) Imaging and Representation:
Photography and Film in the Pacific. Special issue of Pacific
Studies, forthcoming.
Lutz, Catherine A. and Jane L.
Collins 1993. Reading National Geographic. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press. Esp Chs 4 and 5.
Rony Fatimah Tobing 1996. The
Third Eye: Race, Cinema and Ethnographic Spectacle. Duke
University Press: Durham and London. Esp Ch. 5.
Thomas, Nicholas 1995. Oceanic
Art. London: Thames and Hudson, Esp Ch. 9.
15. Week Fifteen April 29th
Gender and Development
There is often a tension between
arguments which see women as marginalized by development
processes and which therefore have an inclusive rhetoric and
those which suggest that women’s situation vis-a-vis men is
being progressively worsened by development. We will try to
assess these claims in relation to Tahiti and the Highlands of
Papua New Guinea, through the texts of Lockwood and Sexton in
particular. Are there similarities in the processes of capitalist
development? What are the important differences? What are the
ways in which the Pacific women writing in Bain’s collection
ponder whether sustainable development might be malignant growth?
Consider how they offer gendered critiques of foreign models of
population and environment in relation to development, especially
logging, mining and tourism. How do their critiques compare with
those of Hau’ofa?
Core Reading
Bain, ‘Atu Emberson-Bain
1994. Sustainable Development or Malignant Growth?
Perspectives of Pacific Island Women. Suva: Marama
Publications. See esp Chapters 1, 5, 7, 15, 23, 26.
Hau’ofa, Epeli 1993. Our sea
of islands. In Eric Waddell, Vijay Naidu and Epeli Hau’ofa
(eds) A New Oceania: Rediscovering our sea of islands.
Suva: University of the South Pacific and Beake House, 2-16.
Lockwood, Victoria 1993. Tahitian
Transformation: Gender and Capitalist Development in a Rural
Society. Boulder and London: Lynne Reiner.
Sexton, Lorraine 1993. Pigs,
Pearlshells and Women’s Work: Collective Response to Change
in Highland Papua New Guinea. In Victoria Lockwood et al (eds) Contemporary
Pacific Societies: Studies in Development and Change.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall., 117-134.
Recommended Reading
Knauft, Bruce 1997. Gender
identity, political economy and modernity in Melanesia and
Amazonia. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
3(2):233-259.
Sexton, Lorraine Dusak 1982. Wok
Meri: A Women’s Saving and Exchange System in Highland
Papua New Guinea. Oceania 52:167-198.
16 Week Sixteen, May 6th
Review of Course and Celebration.
mj/ga/mj revised 4/2/98
Omitted Topic
Navigators and ‘Going
Native’: - Foreign Men and Indigenous Women
The first foreigners to the
Pacific came on boats - explorers, sailors, whalers and traders.
Most of them were men. The dynamics of the relations between
‘men on boats’ has been explored both by Gananath
Obeyeskere, in relation to the Cook voyages and by Greg Dening in
relation to Bligh and the Bounty. We might explore the theatre of
the ship not just in terms of the structure of hierarchy and
violence, but also in terms of the class codes of masculinity and
the familial metaphors which formed around the captain as
‘father’. But how did these relations on board connect
with relations on the beach? What about mutiny and desertion,
sexual liaisons with indigenous women and the typifications of
male sailors, traders and beachcombers ‘going native’.
What did this imply? Were there significant differences between
island sites and epochs in how foreign men related to local
women? Why do you think sexual liaisons between foreign men and
Pacific women have been described as ‘prostitution’ or
concubinage? Were there important differences between
nationalities and colonies in what happened to children born of
these unions? How far might Stoler’s anlaysis of colonial
southeast Asia illuminate such relations in the Pacific?
Core Reading
"Asterisk" [Robert J.
Fletcher] Edited by Bohun Lynch Isles of Illusion: Letters
from the South Seas. London: Constable and Company.
Dening, Greg 1992. Mr
Bligh’s Bad Language: Passion, Power and Theatre on the
Bounty. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press. Esp Chs
Obeyesekere, Gananath 1992. The
Apotheosis of Captain Cook. European Mythmaking in the Pacific.
Princeton and Honolulu: Princeton University Press and Bishop
Museum Press, Chs 3, 6, 7.
Young, Michael W. 1994 Gone Native
in Isles of Illusion: In search of Asterisk in Epi. In Carrier,
James W. (Ed.) History and Tradition in Melanesian
Anthropology. Berkeley: University of California Press,
193-223.
Recommended Reading
Grimshaw, Patricia and Helen
Morton 1995. Paradoxes of the Colonial Male Gaze: European Men
and Maori Women. In Emma Greenwood, Klaus Neumann and Andrew
Sartori (eds) Work in Flux. Parkville, Victoria:
University of Melbourne History Department, 144-158.
Stoler, Ann Laura 1991. Carnal
Knowledge and Imperial Power:Gender, Race and Morality in
Colonial Asia. In Gender at the Crossroads of
Knowledge:Feminist Anthropology in the Postmodern Era. Edited
by Michaela di Leonardo. Berkeley:University of California Press,
51-101.
Stoler, Ann Laura 1997. Sexual
Affronts and Racial Frontiers: European Identities and the
Cultural Politics of Exclusion in Colonial Southeast Asia. In
Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler (eds) Tensions of
Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 198-237.
[Subject: History; Gender; Anthropology;
Pacific/Comparative]
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