Christoph Meiners (1747—1810) was one of 18th-century Europe's most important readers of global travel literature, and he has been credited as a founder of the disciplines of ethnology and anthropology. This article examines a part of his final work, Untersuchungen über die Verschiedenheiten der Menschennaturen [Inquiries on the differences of human natures], published posthumously in the 1810s. Here Meiners developed an elaborate argument, based on empirical evidence, that the different races of men emerged indigenously at different times and in different (...) places in natural history. Specifically this article shows how a sedentary scholar who never left Europe constructed a narrative of human origins and migrations on the basis of (1) French theory from the 1750s (Charles de Brosses and Simon Pelloutier) and (2) data gathered by explorers as reported in travel literature (J. R. Forster, Pérouse, Cook, Marsden). (shrink)

This article discusses the impact of the local context on the implementation of a teaching practice observation protocol. It explores the methodological adaptations made within the framework of a collaborative research in professional didactics in French Polynesia. This research, aimed at involving teachers in the shared analysis of their own teaching activity of “Polynesian languages and culture”, required taking into account their context of engagement in order to reinvent a research approach meeting the needs of the researcher as well (...) as those of the teachers. Taking into account their respective cultural backgrounds, it allowed a conceptual widening of the theoretical field founding the approach. (shrink)

Polynesia is conventionally described as a triangle, with Hawai‘i at the apex, Easter Island at the south‐eastern corner, and New Zealand at the south‐western. Samoa and Tonga are the main island groups of Western Polynesia; the Society Islands, the Tuamotus, and the Marquesas are the main groups of Central Polynesia. Polynesian outliers can be found in Melanesia and Micronesia to the west.

The environmental crisis is global in scope, yet contemporary environmental ethics is centered predominantly in Western philosophy and religion. _Earth's Insights_ widens the scope of environmental ethics to include the ecological teachings embedded in non-Western worldviews. J. Baird Callicott ranges broadly, exploring the sacred texts of Islam, Hinduism, Jainism, Taoism, Confucianism, and Zen Buddhism, as well as the oral traditions of Polynesia, North and South America, and Australia. He also documents the attempts of various peoples to put their environmental (...) ethics into practice. Finally, he wrestles with a question of vital importance to all people sharing the fate of this small planet: How can the world's many and diverse environmental philosophies be brought together in a complementary and consistent whole? (shrink)

Until the end of the 15th century America had remained the “lost continent.” Her inhabitants, neglected by all, lived removed from the other populations of the globe. The accidental arrival of a few Icelandic boats in Canada and the northeastern United States, or of occasional Asiatic junk boats on the California coast had had no influence on the culture or the physical type of the American Indian. And a real immigration from Polynesia is doubtful and has never been satisfactorily (...) demonstrated.Some new proof of the extended biological isolation of these populations has been offered by the study of their blood composition. Although most of them show Mongolan traits more or less markedly, almost the totality of South American Indians belong to the blood group O, and all are likewise Rh negative. The group A, largely represented in Asia, is found with certain frequency only in the northwest tribes of the continent. (shrink)

This work, an initiative of the University of French Polynesia, Tahiti, showcases research collaboration between small island universities in the Pacific. It addresses a number of 'big issues' for Oceania which are also big issues for the world, concerning the biosphere and human society, sustainable development and well-being. The authors seek to create an ecosystem of knowledge through a dialogue, in English and French, between the natural sciences, the social sciences and the humanities. The work also brings into perspective (...) academic and traditional knowledge, with a view to enhancing cultural and agricultural practices and the development of public policy. Climate change, environmental degradation and food security are key questions for survival. How can the preservation of cultural heritage, the transmission of native languages and the integration of traditional knowledge into formal education contribute to a harmonious future? How is the phenomenon of violence relevant to an understanding of history, interpersonal relations and social inclusiveness, including for women in the political sphere? The Tongan-Fijian writer Epeli Hau'ofa described Oceania imaginatively as a 'Sea of Islands'. This volume sees Pacific islands as being interconnected in ways beyond imagining, in which nowhere is remote, where the peripheral has become a decentred centre. (shrink)

Il existe plusieurs faisceaux de présomption qui témoigneraient de relation entre les Polynésiens et les Amérindiens d’Amérique du Sud : il est aujourd’hui admis que les Polynésiens ont atteint l’Amérique du Sud. Si la patate douce est un indice d’anciens contacts entre la Polynésie et l’Amérique du Sud, des archéologues ont aussi trouvé sur la façade pacifique de l’Amérique du Chili des ossements de poulets polynésiens. Quelles seraient les étoiles que les Polynésiens pourraient avoir suivies pour se pourvoir en patate (...) douce en Amérique du Sud et plus précisément au Chili, sous les latitudes où les chercheurs ont trouvé des poules polynésiennes? L’ethnoastronomie tentera de répondre à la question de l’itinéraire de la patate douce, en soulevant l’hypothèse du rôle des étoiles comme repère spatial. There are several bundles of presumption that would testify of relationship between Polynesians and Native Americans from South America: it is now accepted that the Polynesians have reached South America. If sweet potato is a sign of ancient contacts between Polynesia and South America, archaeologists have also found on the Pacific Ocean facade in Chile the bones of Polynesian chickens. What would be the stars possibly followed by the Polynesians to get sweet potato in South America and Chile, under the latitudes where researchers have found Polynesian chickens? The ethnoastronomy will attempt to respond to the issue of the route of the sweet potato, by raising the hypothesis of the role of the stars as spatial coordinate system. (shrink)

Tribal art , also termed ethnographic art or, in an expression seldom used today, primitive art , is the art of small-scale nonliterate societies. Some of the traditional artifacts to which the term refers may not be art in any obvious European sense, and many of the cultures where they occur may not strictly-speaking be tribal in social structure. The rubric nevertheless persists because the arts produced by small-scale cultures share significant elements in common. The tribal arts which have gained (...) the greatest attention in the West come from the Americas (such as the Inuit, Southwest and Plains Indians, and isolated areas of Central and South America), Oceania (including Melanesia and Australia, Polynesia and New Zealand), and Subsaharan Africa. The characteristics which define a small-scale, traditional society are (1) isolation, politically and economically, from civilizations of Europe, North Africa, or Asia, (2) oral traditions in the absence of literacy, (3) small, independent population groupings, usually in villages of no more than a few hundred souls who live a life of face-to-face social interaction and informal social control, (4) a low level of labor/craft specialization, (5) subsistence by hunting, fishing, and gathering and/or small-scale agriculture, (6) little technology beyond hand tools, and that often of stone rather than metal, and (7) slow rates of cultural change prior to European contact. Of this list, small size, lack of written language, and isolation from large civilizations are the essential features of societies whose art is discussed here. (shrink)

Résumé Si elle disposait du dispositif théorique adéquat, la théologie protestante saurait que faire des rites que les Églises protestantes célèbrent! Fort de cette conviction, l’auteur propose de comprendre le rite comme une technique d’influence. Reprenant les travaux de Catherine Bell, il invite à rechercher les stratégies de ritualisation mises en place pour chaque rite afin de découvrir le type de relation à Dieu que chaque Église y suggère. À titre d’exemple, l’auteur applique cette méthode à la célébration de la (...) cène dans l’Église évangélique de Polynésie française.If Protestant theology had the theoretical tools to reflect upon ritual activities, it would know how to theologically analyze the rites performed in Protestant churches. Based on this conviction, the author sets up an understanding of ritual as a technique that influences cultural and religious representations. Inspired by Catherine Bell’s work, the author proposes to uncover the strategies of ritualization established for each rite in order to reveal what type of relationship to God each congregation develops. As an example, the author applies this methodology to the celebration of the Eucharist in the Evangelical Church of French Polynesia. (shrink)

Tomasello argues in the target article that, in generalizing the concrete obligations originating from interdependent collaboration to one's entire cultural group, humans become “ultra-cooperators.” But are all human populations cooperative in similar ways? Based on cross-cultural studies and my own fieldwork in Polynesia, I argue that cooperation varies along several dimensions, and that the underlying sense of obligation is culturally modulated.

In 1876, Brazilian physical anthropologists De Lacerda and Peixoto published findings of detailed anatomical and osteometric investigation of the new human skull collection of Rio de Janeiro’s Museu Nacional. They argued not only that the Indigenous ‘Botocudo’ in Brazil might be autochthonous to the New World, but also that they shared analogic proximity to other geographically very distant human groups – the New Caledonians and Australians – equally attributed limited cranial capacity and resultant inferior intellect. Described by Blumenbach and Morton, (...) ‘Botocudo’ skulls were highly valued scientific specimens in 19th-century physical anthropology. A recent genomic study has again related ‘the Botocudo’ to Indigenous populations from the other side of the world by identifying ‘Polynesian ancestry’ in two of 14 Botocudo skulls held at the Museu Nacional. This article places the production of scientific knowledge in multidisciplinary, multiregional historical perspectives. We contextualize modern narratives in the biological sciences relating ‘Botocudo’ skulls and other cranial material from lowland South America to Polynesia, Melanesia, and Australia. With disturbing irony, such studies often unthinkingly reinscribe essentialized historic racial categories such as ‘the Botocudos’, ‘the Polynesians’, and ‘the Australo-Melanesians’. We conclude that the fertile alliance of intersecting sciences that is revolutionizing understandings of deep human pasts must be informed by sensitivity to the deep histories of terms, classification schemes, and the disciplines themselves. (shrink)

La communauté francophone de l'Océanie insulaire se limite à quatre membres, la Nouvelle-Calédonie, la Polynésie française, le Vanuatu et Wallis-et-Futuna, dispersés entre la Mélanésie et la Polynésie. La langue française ne joue pas un rôle de lingua franca puisque ce sont plusieurs dizaines de langues autochtones mélanésiennes et polynésiennes, auxquelles on peut ajouter les langues des minorités asiatiques ainsi que l'anglais et le bichlamar , qui assurent la communication orale entre les différents groupes, clans et royaumes. Les solidarités et les (...) dynamiques endogènes de ce groupe francophone sont finalement très limitées. Le Vanuatu, avec son développement humain moyen, est là pour le rappeler. Si la francophonie océanienne doit plus son existence au hasard de l'histoire et de la géographie, révèle-t-elle pour autant une véritable aspiration de ses habitants à partager un héritage colonial commun?The French-Speaking community of insular Oceania is made up of only four members, New Caledonia, French Polynesia, Vanuatu and Wallis-and-Futuna which are scattered between Melanesia and Polynesia. The French language does not play the role of a lingua franca, since the different groups, clans and kingdoms communicate orally in several dozens of indigenous Melanesian and Polynesian languages along with the languages of the Asian minorities, English and Bichlamar . The endogenous dynamics and solidarities of this French-Speaking unit are very limited. Vanuatu, with its rather mediocre human development, is a good example. If the existence of an Oceanian French-Speaking Community is due more to a coincidence of history and geography, does it nonetheless reveal a true aspiration of its inhabitants to share a common colonial heritage? (shrink)

The ArgumentThe avant-garde's fascination with technology around 1900 grew out of several motivations: to shock the antitechnological bourgeois public; to experience a sense of mastery toward the material world, especially with cars, airplanes, and other machines; and to overcome the nineteenth-century separation of art and technology. The article highlights the radical shifts in the perception of technology that correspond with the emerging hands-on encounter with technological objects in homes, cities and at the workplace at the turn of the century. This (...) technological fundamentalism differed sharply from the anxious and symbolically mediated approach to the “materialism” of the machine in the nineteenth century. It was accompanied by a concept of liberation through technological purity which is reflected by the fact that Gropius, Mies van der Rohe and Corbusier did not just design functional objects but also made special efforts to accentuate their functionalism as part of the aesthetic experience of modernity. As French and Italian artists, especially the Futurists, incorporated speed, virility, and the experience of the elementary in the metaphoric construction of technology, they even expressed a kinship with those painters and sculptors who shifted their focus to the rediscovery of the “primitive” magic in the art works from Africa and Polynesia. (shrink)

We present an algebraic account of the Tongan kinship terminology (TKT) that provides an insightful journey into the fabric of Tongan culture. We begin with the ethnographic account of a social event. The account provides us with the activities of that day and the centrality of kin relations in the event, but it does not inform us of the conceptual system that the participants bring with them. Rather, it is a slice in time of an ongoing dynamic process that links (...) behavior with a conceptual system of kin relations and vice versa. To understand this interplay, we need an account of the underlying conceptual system that is being activated during the event. Thus, we introduce a formal, algebraically based account of TKT. This account brings to the fore the underlying logic of TKT and allows us to distinguish between features of the kinship system that arise from the logic of TKT as a generative structure and features that must have arisen through cultural intervention. (shrink)

Histories of economic development during the Cold War do not typically consider connections to race science and eugenics. By contrast, this article historicizes the debates sparked by the International Labor Organization’s Puno–Tambopata project in Peru and demonstrates how Cold War development practice shared common epistemological terrain with racial and eugenic thought from the Andes. The International Labor Organization project’s goal of resettling indigenous groups from the Peruvian highlands to lower-lying tropical climates sparked heated debates about the biological specificity of Andean (...) highlanders’ physiques and ability to survive in the tropics. Such concerns betrayed the antitypological consensus expressed in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Race Statements and defended by one of the main proponents of the resettlement project, the Swiss–American anthropologist Alfred Métraux. The concern with Andean racial types was central to the research agenda of the acclaimed Peruvian physiologist Carlos Monge, who endorsed modernization projects that did not entail moving highlanders outside of their traditional climate. The debates sparked by the Puno–Tambopata project demonstrate how Cold War development discourse grappled with racial and eugenic thought from Latin America and the Global South and thereby produced projects of indigenous “improvement.”. (shrink)

"In 2007, I underwent a crisis of sexual identity. I was married, with two young children, when I became attracted to another woman. The hostility I encountered at the Anglican church I was attending made me curious about other people's experiences. It seemed to me imperative that stories of being gay in the Church be heard, especially in the context of the current maelstrom within the Anglican community in which the Church has been encouraged to undergo a 'listening process'. This (...) book is the result." Outspoken presents the narratives of eleven people who have come out in the Anglican Church in New Zealand, including two ordained church members. The author has written a general introduction, plus an introduction to each individual story and reflections on it. The book closes with a postscript that discusses truth and the Church; community, belonging and rejection; ideas about hell and damnation; the theology of denial; and the implications and ramifications of the "Don't ask, don't tell" approach. The author notes that "People's lives are sacred ground and the area of sexuality is one where people are arguably at their most vulnerable." She hopes that this research will contribute to community building within the Anglican Church. (shrink)