A History of the Pacific Islands

A History of the Pacific Islands
Author: Deryck Scarr
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2013-12-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 1136837892

A book about the past and present Pacific Islands, wide-ranging in time and space spanning the centuries from the first settlement of the islands until the present day.

Beyond the Horizon

Beyond the Horizon
Author: Clifford Sather
Publisher: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2008-05-16
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9518580707

Society is never just a localized aggregate of people but exists by virtue of its members’ narrative and conceptual awareness of other times and places. In Jukka Siikala’s work this idea evolves into a broad ethnographic and theoretical interest in worlds beyond the horizon, in the double sense of “past” and “abroad.” This book is a tribute to Jukka’s contributions to anthropology by his colleagues and students and marks his 60th birthday in January 2007. By exploring the near, distant, inward and outward horizons towards which societies project their reality, the authors aim at developing a new, productive language for addressing culture as a way of experiencing and engaging the world.

The Archaeology of Micronesia

The Archaeology of Micronesia
Author: Paul Rainbird
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2004-06-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521656306

Table of contents

Summoning the Powers Beyond

Summoning the Powers Beyond
Author: Jay Dobbin
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2011-09-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 082486011X

Summoning the Powers Beyond collects and reconstructs the old religions of preindustrial Micronesia. It draws mostly from written sources from the turn of the nineteenth century and the period immediately after World War II: reports of the Hamburg South Sea Expedition of 1908–1910, articles by German Roman Catholic missionaries in Micronesia included in the journal Anthropos, and reports by the Coordinated Investigation of Micronesian Anthropology (CIMA) and the American Board of Commissioners of the Foreign Missions (ABCFM). A detailed introduction and an overview of Micronesian religion are followed by separate chapters detailing religion in the Chuukic-speaking islands, Pohnpei, Kosrae, the Marshall Islands, Yap, Palau, Kiribati, and Nauru. The Chamorro-speaking group of the Marianas is omitted because lengthy periods of intense military and missionary activity eradicated most of the local religion. The Polynesian outliers Nukuoro and Kapingamarangi are discussed at the end primarily to underscore the contrasts between Polynesian and Micronesian religion. In a concluding chapter, the author highlights the similarities and differences between the areas within Micronesia and then attempts an appreciation or evaluation of Micronesia religion. Finally, he addresses the evidence of a tentative hypothesis that Micronesian religion is sufficiently different from that of Polynesia and Melanesia to justify the continued claim of a separate Micronesian religion.