Customer Reviews

Tahitians: Mind and Experience in the Society Islands

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Robert I. Levy's classic work on Tahitians is an unusual meeting point between traditional ethnographies (broad cultural surveys with everything from gardening charms to system of government) and the more recent wave of psychological ethnographies (sometimes so specific that they discuss little but folk beliefs about the self, or semantic analysis of emotion terms). The combination is refreshing: a trained psychoanalyst and psychiatrist conducts more than two years of fieldwork in a Tahitian village, and gives us not only his insights, but also his data, his process of interpretation, and the sociocultural context in which he worked. Levy's Tahiti was also in a continuing process of Westernization and modernization. Salient contrasts for the islanders were "traditional" versus "demi-European" Tahitians, and both again versus the French government and Chinese merchants. The "traditional" Tahitian culture itself, however, came from the interaction of an older Tahitian culture with Protestant missionaries in the 19th century. Levy draws on the historical and comparative records to present a sympathetic picture of a small society caught in complicated times. Finally, Levy is simply a good writer, and appears to be a good fieldworker as well. He introduces us to nine Tahitians, not all of whom are nice or happy. Through them (in one of the early examples of person-centered anthropology), we glimpse something of what it means to be Tahitian. Levy's presentation is neither romantic nor sentimental, but in reading this book, one understands why the South Seas, and Tahiti in particular, have occupied such a large place in the European imagination. It's a pity there aren't more books like this in the anthropological canon.

World War II had relatively little influence on the culture of Tahiti and the surrounding Society Islands of the South Pacific, unlike its effect on much of Melanesia and Micronesia, further west and north. Rather, major changes began in the early 1960s, when France decided to conduct nuclear tests in the area. This decision, with massive transfers of money, technology, and personnel, had "an explosive effect" on Tahitian culture. Levy conducted the research for this book just as the new period was opening, from 1961 to 1964. Thus, we can probably say that no matter how good it is, TAHITIANS is now a historical document. Nevertheless it is an excellent psycho-portrait of a people at a certain point in history, a portrait that utilizes earlier histories and descriptions from the moment of European contact in 1767.

TAHITIANS is a work of psychological anthropology, one of the best I have ever seen. It is a work about Tahitian culture and personality formation that delves into a myriad aspects of life from childbirth, the widespread adoption common in all Polynesian societies, homosexuality, and leadership qualities to religion, moral behavior, and dreams. Language plays a big part in the description---over 200 Tahitian words are used, sometimes frequently, in order to describe relationships and feelings more exactly. Many fascinating insights on Tahitian culture in general can be gleaned from his numerous passages on language. Levy's writing is clear and simple throughout, though a few passages were a little too `field-specific' to psychology for a layman like myself. At over five hundred pages, the book is nothing if not comprehensive, but Levy did sacrifice analysis for the sake of presenting all his data. The analysis appears throughout, but sometimes does not have a clear direction. The author maintains a modest tone, often retiring from a discussion inconclusively. For example, he tackles older anthropological concerns about the difference between the `content' and `process' of thought which led previous generations of scholars to write of the "primitive mind". While his answers are good, and strictly in line with what he found in his own work, they do not answer those concerns. [Perhaps impossible, perhaps conducive to racist thinking in a racism-plagued world.] Another section on `guilt cultures' vs. `shame cultures' is also rather inconclusive. It might have been more useful to sidestep these old, oft-debated issues [now half a century or more out of date] to concentrate on his subjects, the villagers of Huahine island and the urban dwellers in a section of Papeete, the formerly sleepy capital of Tahiti. The lack of a strong summary is the weakest point about TAHITIANS; such an amazingly vivid description just fizzles out.

I have reviewed another book in this field for amazon.com---"All the Mothers are One" by Stanley Kurtz about India. Kurtz' book is entirely based on analysis of other writers' theories and building some new ones. He did no field work himself. Levy's book, written entirely on extensive field work and interviews, is just the opposite, yet both are extremely useful works for students wishing to delve further into psychological studies of other cultures. Teachers looking for good books to use in courses touching on psychological anthropology or Pacific Studies have come to the right place. TAHITIANS is an overlooked classic that deserves to be read by a much wider audience than has been the case.