Paul van der Grijp's Books

Manifestations of Mana

Political Power and Divine Inspiration in Polynesia

By: Paul van der Grijp

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Manifestations of Mana

Political Power and Divine Inspiration in Polynesia

By: Paul van der Grijp

This book explores the role of mana in past and present configurations of chiefly power in the Pacific. Chiefs are often seen as transitional figures between traditional (tribal or feudal) and modern forms of leadership, the latter characterized by rationality and the nation-state with its accompanying bureaucracy. Today, the political arena in the Pacific, although occupied by presidents, members of parliament and court justices, is still ruled by chiefs supporting their authority by tradition, including the notion of mana. Mana may be defined as divine inspiration or energy that manifests itself in persons, objects, places and natural phenomena. Polynesian chiefs have mana because of their descent from ancient gods. Other key concepts such as asymmetrical ideology, mythical constructions of social reality, and social drama are elaborated and applied to a wide specter of ethnographic examples. The configuration and reconfiguration of Tongan chieftaincy and kingship in this book are analyzed as an extended case study of the gradual, and sometimes shock-like, integration of a Polynes ian culture into a global structure, a nation-state, partly imposed from the outside (missionarization, colonization) but also generated from within including state formation and the recent quest for democracy. Together with other Polynesian examples, this forms a relevant illustration of both continuity and change in the configuration of mana and chieftaincy in processes of globalization in the Pacific.

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Page Count

321

Publisher

LIT Verlag Münster

Published Date

ISBN 10

3643904967

ISBN 13

9783643904966

Identity and Development

Tongan Culture, Agriculture, and the Perenniality of the Gift

By: Paul van der Grijp

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Identity and Development

Tongan Culture, Agriculture, and the Perenniality of the Gift

By: Paul van der Grijp

Identity and Development presents a remarkable record of Tonga s increasing participation in the modern global economy, and provides anthropologists, economists, and historians with a detailed case study that bears heavily on major issues of the day, both practically and theoretically. The book focuses on issues of identity, entrepreneurship, and the intricacies of development and addresses the question: How (in the current state of the economy) can a Tongan become a successful grower? This question is set against the background of a boom in cash cropping, sparked by a burgeoning export trade with Japan.

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Page Count

236

Publisher

BRILL

Published Date

ISBN 10

9004433511

ISBN 13

9789004433519

Art and Exoticism

An Anthropology of the Yearning for Authenticity

By: Paul van der Grijp

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Art and Exoticism

An Anthropology of the Yearning for Authenticity

By: Paul van der Grijp

This book is about the yearning for authenticity via art and exoticism. Exoticism related to art cannot be reduced to primitivism alone and also encompasses a search in one's own unconsciousness among other things. The yearning for authenticity through exoticism is explored in a cultural anthropological perspective in the realms of Western philosophy (capita selecta) and colonial literature, currents of art, and in the appreciation of Western art conceptions in non-Western societies. An array of firsthand ethnographic illustrations of art production in Asian and Pacific societies demonstrates complementary processes in the non-Western world. A major hypothesis is that exoticism is closely related to, and often motivated by eroticism, a reason why exoticism should be considered as gendered. Case studies of the falsification of authentic art, the de-sacralization of sacred objects, and of the use of natural materials deriving from endangered species complete the analysis.

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Page Count

359

Publisher

LIT Verlag Münster

Published Date

ISBN 10

3825816672

ISBN 13

9783825816674

Islanderers of the South

By: Paul van der Grijp

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Islanderers of the South

By: Paul van der Grijp

Islanders of the South is an ethnography of the kingdom of Tonga in the South Pacific. This is the first book to examine the interplay of Polynesian and Western ideas within contemporary social and economic practices, not from the point of view of Tongan aristocracy, but from that of the common people. The first describes contemporary Tongan society and the main means of subsistence: agriculture, fishing, and manufacturing. An analysis of the kinship system, with its economic, political, and ideological dimensions, is intertwined with a discussion of Tongan attitudes on life and death, marriage and divorce, social rights and obligations, migration and remittances. Later chapters deal with the crucial questions of land ownership and the circulation of gifts. A large number of genealogies, biographies, and case studies help convey how Tongans live together and how they experience their relationship to nature. Effects on Tonga of global developments—predominantly capitalist in nature—are expressed in the commercialization of the means of subsistence, bringing about changes often regarded as progress. The author raises doubts about this ideology of progress by referring to aspects of nature and culture in Tonga which are disappearing. Up to now Tongans have largely been able to preserve the circulation of gifts and economic self-sufficiency.

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