Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture, and Colonialism in the Pacific

Abstract

Part 1 Objects, exchange, anthropology: prestations and ideology the inalienability of the gift immobile value the promiscuity of objects value - a surplus of theories. Part 2 The permutations of debt - exchange systems in the Pacific: alienation in Melanesian exchange debts and valuables in Fiji and the Marquesas valuables with and without histories the origin of whale teeth value conversion versus competition in kind. Part 3 The indigenous appropriation of European things: the allure of barter the musket economy in the southern Marquesas the representation of the foreign the whale tooth trade and Fijian politics prior systems and later histories. Part 4 The European appropriation of indigenous things: curiosity - colonialism in its infancy converted artifacts - the material culture of Christian missions murder stories - settlers' curios ethnology and the vision of the state artifacts as tokens of industry the name of science. Part 5 The discovery of the gift - exchange and identity in the contemporary Pacific: transformations of Fijian ceremonies the disclosure of reciprocity discoveries.