Aborigines (Discovering other cultures)

Burt, Ben

British Museum Publications

NATIVE NORTH AMERICA PHOTO PACKS

Woff, Richard

BRITISH MUSEUM

Anthropological research has increasingly focused on the effects of material and social change on traditional cultures. Ethnological autobiographies such as this, allow members of such cultures to speak for themselves, providing a unique insight into the subject's life. Michael Kwa'ioloa explains the importance of his traditional culture in providing a stable foundation for life in changing times. He describes his childhood in the forest of East Kwara'ae, his exposure to Western culture in the capital, his arranged marriage and conversion to Christianity. In first-hand testimony, he considers the contrasts between rural society and urban life, exchanges of shell money and working for cash, the power of ancestral ghosts and Christian belief, traditional practices of restitution and modern notions of crime and punishment.

Living Tradition: A Changing Life in Solomon Islands

Kwaioloa, Michael

Biographies & Memoirs

Univ of Hawaii Pr

The Kwara'ae and other peoples of Malaita island in Solomon Islands once dressed for special occasions in ornaments of glistening white shell and pearl shell, intricately carved turtle shell, strings and straps of shell money-beads, and combs and bands patterned with colorful plant fibers. Today these ornaments are easier to find in museums around the world than in Malaita, but the recollections of Kwara'ae elders help us to understand how and why they were once made and worn. With contributions from the neighboring Kwaio people who still make such things and examples from other parts of the island in museum and private collections, this book provides the first comprehensive account of Malaitan decorative and body arts. The book reviews the significance of body ornaments in Kwara'ae society, and the history of their rejection under the changing circumstances of colonial rule and Christian conversion, illustrated by historical photographs. It describes the materials, techniques, and relationships by which ornaments were produced and exchanged, and then catalogs the great variety of ornaments worn throughout Malaita, fully illustrated in detailed drawings. A vanishing tradition is documented here for the interest of Solomon Islanders as well as all those who appreciate Pacific Islanders' arts.

Body Ornaments of Malaita, Solomon Islands

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

The Museum of Mankind: Man and Boy in the British Museum Ethnography Department (Museums and Collections, 12)

The Museum of Mankind was an innovative and popular showcase for minority cultures from around the non-Western world from 1970 to 1997. This memoir is a critical appreciation of its achievements in the various roles of a national museum, of the personalities of its staff and of the issues raised in the representation of exotic cultures. Issues of changing museum theory and practice are raised in a detailed case-study that also focuses on the social life of the museum community. This is the first history of a remarkable museum and a memorable interlude in the long history of one of the world’s oldest and greatest museums. Although not presented as an academic study, it should be useful for museum and cultural studies as a well as a wider readership interested in the British Museum.

Arts & Photography

Berghahn Books

World Art: An Introduction to the Art in Artefacts

What do we mean by 'art'? As a category of objects, the concept belongs to a Western cultural tradition, originally European and now increasingly global, but how useful is it for understanding other traditions? To understand art as a universal human value, we need to look at how the concept was constructed in order to reconstruct it through an understanding of the wider world. 
Western art values have a pervasive influence upon non-Western cultures and upon Western attitudes to them. This innovative yet accessible new text explores the ways theories of art developed as Western knowledge of the world expanded through exploration and trade, conquest, colonisation and research into other cultures, present and past. It considers the issues arising from the historical relationships which brought diverse artistic traditions together under the influence of Western art values, looking at how art has been used by colonisers and colonised in the causes of collecting and commerce, cultural hegemony and autonomous identities.
World Art questions conventional Western assumptions from an anthropological perspective which allows comparison between cultures. It treats art as a property of artefacts rather than a category of objects, reclaiming the idea of 'world art' from the 'art world'. 
This book is essential reading for all students on anthropology of art courses as well as students of museum studies and art history, based on a wide range of case studies and supported by learning features such as annotated further reading and chapter opening summaries.

History & Criticism

Routledge

What do we mean by 'art'? As a category of objects, the concept belongs to a Western cultural tradition, originally European and now increasingly global, but how useful is it for understanding other traditions? To understand art as a universal human value, we need to look at how the concept was constructed in order to reconstruct it through an understanding of the wider world. Western art values have a pervasive influence upon non-Western cultures and upon Western attitudes to them. This innovative yet accessible new text explores the ways theories of art developed as Western knowledge of the world expanded through exploration and trade, conquest, colonisation and research into other cultures, present and past. It considers the issues arising from the historical relationships which brought diverse artistic traditions together under the influence of Western art values, looking at how art has been used by colonisers and colonised in the causes of collecting and commerce, cultural hegemony and autonomous identities.World Art questions conventional Western assumptions of art from an anthropological perspective which allows comparison between cultures. It treats art as a property of artefacts rather than a category of objects, reclaiming the idea of 'world art' from the 'art world'. This book is essential reading for all students on anthropology of art courses as well as students of museum studies and art history, based on a wide range of case studies and supported by learning features such as annotated further reading and chapter opening summaries.

Building a beautiful ornamented 'white canoe' was a way for the Lau people of Malaita in Solomon Islands to honour the ghosts of their ancestors in the days before they became Christians. This book tells the story of the last of these canoes, built in 1968 by one of the few clans still following their traditional religion, as witnessed by the late anthropologist Pierre Maranda.Maranda observed how the great artistic projects of Malaita were once supportedby elaborate ritual procedures and celebrated with community festivals. James Tuita was among the Lau boys who played with Maranda's son and, years later, he visited Quebec to help Maranda with his research. Besides writing the Lau text for this book, he contributes his insights into the radical changes in Lau society during his lifetimenand the importance of maintaining its cultural traditions. Ben Burt, a curator at the British Museum, knew Maranda through his own anthropological research inMalaita and worked with James Tuita to ensure that Maranda's plans for his ethnographic research were realized after his death. It is published, as Marandaintended, in Lau and English languages, to return some of their cultural heritage to the people of Lau, Malaita and Solomon Islands.'The Last White-Canoe describes a people struggling against the challenges of colonial and Christian modernity through the revitalization of the craftsmanship and sacred knowledge of canoe-making during the transition from traditional religion to Christianity. With their experience of working with local experts and appreciation of indigenous historical and cultural knowledge, the authors confidently take the reader into the sacred world of this Lau community and the cultural heritage of Malaita and Solomon Islands. It is a task well done.'Revd Dr Ben Wate, Solomon Islands National University. 'This bilingual, international collaboration in scholarship offers rich insights into the complexities of making a major cultural object in Solomon Islands in the mid-twentieth century. Vividly detailed, and illustratedwith photographs taken throughout the process, the book makes a way of living and thinking alive to the reader.' Dr Lissant Bolton, Keeper of Africa, Oceania and the Americas, British Museum.

The Last White Canoe of the Lau of Malaita, Solomon Islands

Maranda, Pierre

Dede, James Tuita

Sean Kingston Publishing

First Published in 1994. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Tradition and Christianity: The Colonial Transformation of a Solomon Islands Society (Studies in Anthropology and History)

History

Americas

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