Skip to main content

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
Cancel
×
×
Home
  • Home
Chapter
  • Get access
    Buy the print book
    Check if you have access via personal or institutional login
    Log in Register Recommend to librarian
  • Cited by 2
  • Cited by
    Crossref Citations
    Crossref logo
    This (lowercase (translateProductType product.productType)) has been cited by the following publications. This list is generated based on data provided by CrossRef.
    Foale, Simon Cohen, Philippa Januchowski-Hartley, Stephanie Wenger, Amelia and Macintyre, Martha 2011. Tenure and taboos: origins and implications for fisheries in the Pacific. Fish and Fisheries, Vol. 12, Issue. 4, p. 357.
    Connell, John 2010. Pacific islands in the global economy: Paradoxes of migration and culture. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, Vol. 31, Issue. 1, p. 115.
    ×
  • Print publication year: 1997
  • Online publication date: March 2008

3 - Pacific Edens? Myths and Realities of Primitive Affluence

from Part One - The Pacific To 1941
Export citation
Summary
The pioneers who colonised the western Pacific found immense forests and rivers fed by copious rain. The distinction between 'hunting and gathering' and 'agriculture' is a matter of emphasis. The pioneers developed systematic agriculture first in coastal New Guinea, then in the Highlands and later on smaller islands where natural resources would not sustain hunters and gatherers. Technical ingenuity, religious awe and social relations were so intertwined that it is misleading to isolate the 'economic' meaning of multidimensional experience. Land tenure arrangements are often described as 'traditional' or 'customary', but tenure practices on 'customary' land often differ greatly from practices described by early observers, land commissions, or in recorded oral history. Complementing most people's attachment to particular pieces of land was an equally profound commitment to social relations which rested on (and reinforced) trade and exchange. Underpinning all other relations were a host of relationships between women and men, in production, consumption and exchanges.

Keywords:

Recommend this book

Email your librarian or administrator to recommend adding this book to your organisation's collection.

The Cambridge History of the Pacific Islanders
  • Online ISBN: 9781139055574
  • Book DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521441957
Please enter your name
Please enter a valid email address
Who would you like to send this to *

CAPTCHA *

Skip to the audio challenge
×
Allen, Bryant, ‘A Bomb or a Bullet or the Bloody Flux? Population Change in the Aitape Inland, Papua New Guinea, 1941–1945’, Journal of Pacific History xviii: 3–4 (1983).
Ballard, Chris, ‘“The Centre Cannot Hold”: Trade Networks and Sacred Geography in the Papua New Guinea Highlands’, Archaeology in Oceania xxix: 3 (1994).
Bateson, Gregory, Naven, Stanford, 1958.
Bell, F. L. S., ‘The Place of Food in the Social Life of the Tanga’, Oceania xviii (1947).
Bennett, Judith, Wealth of the Solomons: A History of a Pacific Archipelago, 1800–1978, University of Hawai’i Press, 1987.
Bonnemaison, Joel, ‘The Tree and the Canoe: Roots and Mobility in Vanuatu Societies’, Pacific Viewpoint 26 (1985).
Brass, L. J., ‘Stone Age Agriculture in New Guinea’, in Whittaker, J. L., et al. (eds), Documents and Readings in New Guinea History: Prehistory to 1889, Brisbane, 1975.
Brown, Paula, ‘Gender and Social Change: New Forms of Independence for Simbu Women’, Oceania xix (1988).
Bushnell, Andrew, ‘“The Horror” Reconsidered: An Evaluation of the Historical Evidence for Population Decline in Hawai’i, 1778–1803’, Pacific Studies xvi: 3 (1993).
Campbell, Archibald, A Voyage round the World from 1806 to 1812, 1822; reissued by University of Hawai’i Press, 1967.
Cooper, Matthew, ‘Economic Context of Shell Money Production in Malaita’, Oceania xli: 4 (1971).
Crocombe, R. G., ‘Land Tenure in the South Pacific’, in Gerard Ward, R. (ed.), Man in the Pacific Islands, Oxford, 1972.
Davidson, Janet M., ‘The Polynesian Foundation’, in Oliver, W. H., and Williams, B. R. (eds), The Oxford History of New Zealand, Oxford, 1981.
Feil, D. K., ‘Women and Men in the Enga Tee’, American Ethnologist v (1978).
Finney, Ben, Polynesian Peasants and Proletarians, Cambridge Mass., 1973.
Fosberg, F. R. (ed.), Man’s Place in the Island Ecosystem, Honolulu, 1965.
Gardner, Robert, and Heider, Karl, Gardens of War: Life and Death in the New Guinea Stone Age, New York, 1968.
Groube, Les, ‘Contradictions and Malaria in Melanesian and Australian Prehistory’, in Spriggs, M. J. T. et al., A Community of Culture: The People and Prehistory of the Pacific, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra, 1993.
Harding, T. G., ‘Land Tenure’, in Ryan, P. (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Papua New Guinea, Melbourne, 1972.
Hau’ofa, Epeli, ‘Our Sea of Islands’, in Waddell, Eric, Naidu, Vijay and Hau’ofa, Epeli (eds), A New Oceania: Rediscovering Our Sea of Islands, Suva, 1993.
Hecht, Julia, ‘The Culture of Gender in Pukapuka: Male, Female and the Mayakitanga “Sacred Maid”’, Journal of the Polynesian Society lxxxvi (1977).
Hezel, Francis, The First Taint of Civilization: A History of the Caroline and Marshall Islands in Pre-Colonial Days, 1521–1885, University of Hawai’i Press, 1983.
Irwin, Geoffrey, ‘The Emergence of Mailu’, Terra Australis 10 (1985).
Kamakau, Samuel, Ruling Chiefs of Hawaii, Honolulu, 1961.
Kelly, Raymond, Etoro Social Structure: A Study in Structural Contradiction, Ann Arbor, 1974.
Kirch, Patrick, Feathered Gods and Fishhooks, University of Hawai’i Press, 1985.
Macintyre, Martha and Allen, Jim, ‘Trading for Subsistence: The Case from the Southern Massim’, in Yen, D. E., and Mummery, J. M. J. (eds), Pacific Production Systems: Approaches to Economic Prehistory, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra, 1990.
Malo, David, Hawaiian Antiquities, 1839; 2nd edn, Bernice P. Bishop Museum, 1951.
Meggitt, Mervyn, ‘“Pigs are Our Hearts”: The Te Exchange Cycle among the Mae Enga of New Guinea’, Oceania xliv: 3 (1974).
Nash, Jill, ‘Gender Attributes and Equality’, in Strathern, Marilyn (ed.), Dealing with Inequality, Cambridge, 1987.
Pigafette, Antonio, Magellan’s Voyage: A Narrative Account of the First Circumnavigation, in Hezel, Francis and Berg, Mark (eds), Micronesia: Winds of Change, Saipan, 1979.
Ravuvu, Asesela, The Fijian Ethos, Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific, Suva, 1987.
Ravuvu, Asesela, Vaka i Taukei: The Fijian Way of Life, Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific, Suva, 1983.
Ritter, Philip, ‘The Population of Kosrae at Contact’, Micronesica xvii: 1–2 (1981).
Sahlins, Marshall, Anahulu: Historical Ethnography, vol. 1 of Kirch, P. V. and Sahlins, M. D. (eds), Anahulu: The Anthropology of History in the Kingdom of Hawaii, Chicago, 1992.
Stannard, David, Before the Horror: The Population of Hawai’i on the Eve of Western Contact, University of Hawai’i Press, 1989.
Strathern, Andrew trans., Ongka: A Self-account by a New Guinea Big-man, London, 1979.
Weiner, Annette, Women of Value, Men of Renown: New Perspectives in Trobriand Exchange, Austin, 1976.
Weiner, Annette, ‘Why Cloth?’, in Weiner, Annette, and Schneider, J. (eds), Cloth and Human Experience, Washington, DC, 1989.
White, J. Peter and Mulvaney, D. J., ‘How Many People?’, in Mulvaney, D. J., and White, J. Peter (eds), Australians to 1788, Sydney, 1988.
Whittaker, J. L., et al. (eds), Documents and Readings in New Guinea History: Prehistory to 1889, Brisbane, 1975.
Young, Michael W., Fighting with Food: Leadership, Values and Social Control in Massim Society, Cambridge, 1971.
Cancel
Confirm
×