Declared Port Vila land owners visit President

On Monday last week the declared custom land owners of the land Port Vila town has been built on met President Obed Tallis to officially inform him of the declaration. The declaration was reportedly made in May last year by the Efate Island Court last year. The declared custom land owners from Erakor, Eratap, Pango […]

Chief Worwor expresses concerns about upcoming chiefs elections

The caretaker President of the Port Vila Town Council of Chiefs and member of the caretaker Malvatumauri council of chiefs has raised concerns about what he said was a new method being introduced for election of Malvatumauri, island councils of chiefs and the two urban councils of chiefs due next month. All the councils of chiefs […]

Melanesia and Western Colonialism

Melanesia is a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean and forms, together with Micronesia and Polynesia, one of the three cultural areas of Oceania. Melanesia includes New Guinea, the Torres Strait Islands of northern Australia, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, and the Fiji Islands. The name Melanesia derives from Greek words meaning black islands […]

Rank and Status in Polynesia and Melanesia: Introduction

Introduction Jean Guiart p. 7-8 TEXT AUTHOR FULL TEXT Source: http://books.openedition.org 1Douglas Oliver m’est arrivé à Nouméa, un jour de la fin de 1949 si je ne m’abuse, alors que je peinais dans le démarrage d’une carrière scientifique à partir d’une formation reçue à une époque fertile en orages. Après Radcliffe-Brown vu à Paris en 1947, c’était le […]

Tahitian Words for Race and Class

Paul Kay p. 81-93 TEXT BIBLIOGRAPHY NOTES AUTHORILLUSTRATIONS FULL TEXT Source:  http://books.openedition.org/ 1The system of meanings underlying Tahitian words for racial/social categories is examined and compared to the results of similar studies on the corresponding lexical domain in the Portuguese of Brazil. The principal theoretical conclusion is that, while a distinctive feature (or componential analysis) model of lexical structure […]

Tahitian Folk Medicine

Antony Hooper p. 61-80 TEXT BIBLIOGRAPHY NOTES AUTHOR FULL TEXT Source: http://books.openedition.org/ 1This paper is an ethnographic account of the Tahitian concept of ma’i’sickness’, and is based on field research in the Iles sous-le-vent. The first section outlines the four major categories of ma’i commonly distinguished by Tahitians – Injury, True sickness, Ghost sickness and Retribution sickness – and the principles which underlie […]

Race, Class and Ethnicity : Industrial Relations in the South Pacific

Race, Class and Ethnicity : Industrial Relations in the South Pacific with Special Reference to Fiji and Bougainville1 Alexander Mamak and Richard Bedford p. 45-60 TEXT BIBLIOGRAPHY NOTES ENDNOTES AUTHOR(S)ILLUSTRATIONS FULL TEXT Source: http://books.openedition.org 1 The fieldwork conducted by the senior author in Fiji between 1970-72 was made possible by a grant (…) 1 The importance of class analysis for explaining contemporary behaviour in the South […]

Rank and Status in Polynesia and Melanesia

Essays in honor of professor Douglas Oliver Douglas L. Oliver Publications de la SdO … Excerpt (Source: http://books.openedition.org) One of the less fortunate legacies that we who practice ethnography in Oceania have given the scholarly world is the stereotype of the Melanesian leader as “Big Man”. The designation “Big Man”, derived literally from the metaphor commonly used […]

Archaeology and the Origins of Social Stratification in Southern Bougainville

Archaeology and the Origins of Social Stratification in Southern Bougainville John Terrell p. 23-43 TEXT BIBLIOGRAPHY NOTES AUTHORILLUSTRATIONS FULL TEXT Source: http://books.openedition.org One of the Lessons of modern economic geography, abstract theory of graphs, and contemporary thinking in theoretical biology appears to be that hierarchical control networks are one solution to the problem of what to do about systems that […]