"I found this volume worthwhile and often thought-provoking." -Anthropos"[This book] as much to offer anyone interested in ethnography as a way of knowing the world. It provides a convenient outline of the discipline's struggle with basic concepts and issues, as well as a rich array of ethnographic instances that lead to engaged reflection." --The Contemporary Pacific"It is not often that Pacific academia is blessed by the arrival of intellectually insightful books that attempt to probe the inner 'being' of the Pacific world ... As a collection of anthropological pieces, this book presents one of the most insightful attempts at analysing Pacific epistemologies." --The Journal of Pacific Studies
Product Description
In Pacific societies, local knowledge, which has been accumulated over thousands of years and is irreplaceable, is rapidly disappearing. With the extinction of languages, the ability to observe and interpret the world from varying perspectives is also being lost. At the same time, an enormous body of knowledge about nature, plants and animals is vanishing.However, in parallel with this, the people of the Pacific are confronted with new modes of knowledge and newly introduced technologies through imported educational systems, missions of various denominations, and the media. They do not passively assimilate this knowledge but adopt, adapt, and apply it in a syncretistic way.These changes will have permanent effects on the individual lives of people in the region and their knowledge about themselves and their surrounding 'world'. This stimulating book tracks the course of these developments and offers revealing insights into the complexity of Pacific peoples' responses to the process of globalization.
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