Book
Paradise remade: the politics of culture and history in Hawai'i
Temple University Press • Philadelphia • Published In 1993 • Pages:
By: Buck, Elizabeth Bentzel.
Abstract
This is a study of the politics of Hawaiian history using concepts from various theories of social formation and culture change. Buck's analysis '…couples Marxist-informed concepts of social formation, ideology, and forms of symbolic representation with poststructuralist conceptualizations of the power of linguistic practices and how power in terms of social relationships, knowledge, and identities are shaped by discursive regimes' (p. 17). To illustrate these concepts the author uses the changing historical contexts of the production, practice, and meaning of chant, HULA, and Hawaiian music to offer a way of reading the history of Hawaii. Buck states that long before Cook's arrival in the islands '…Hawaiian chant and HULA had been changing as the economic, political, and ideological structures of the islands changed; it is still developing as each new wave of outside cultural and social influence reaches the islands and as relationships of power are reformed. By looking at the ways chant, HULA, and contemporary Hawaiian music have been variously used and discursively constituted by different groups and institutions over time, music emerges as an important arena of struggle -- a site where the 'politics of culture' were engaged in the past and continue to be contested in the present' (p. 17).
- HRAF PubDate
- 2003
- Region
- Oceania
- Sub Region
- Polynesia
- Document Type
- Book
- Evaluation
- Creator Type
- Ethnologist
- Document Rating
- 4: Excellent Secondary Data
- 5: Excellent Primary Data
- Analyst
- John Beierle ; 2002
- Field Date
- no date
- Coverage Date
- late eighteenth - twentieth centuries
- Coverage Place
- Hawaiian Islands, United States
- Notes
- Elizabeth Buck
- Includes bibliographical references (p. 193-226)
- LCCN
- 92000310
- LCSH
- Hawaiians