book chapter

The South Seas -- yesterday and today: cultural change among the Tongans and an attempt to interpret this development

A. Limbach • Braunschweig • Published In 1955 • Pages: HRAF Ms.: 1, 518 leaves [Original: 1-331, 352-359 ]

By: Koch, Gerd, Schütze, Frieda.

Abstract

This source represents the results of the author's fieldwork in the Tongan Archipelago from October 1951 to June 1952, during which tome he visited five Tongan settlements on the small islands of Nomuka, Lifuka, and 'Uiha on the larger island of Vava'u and in the 'capital city' of Nuku'alofa. Culture, as defined by the author, is '…everything that man brings forth in the struggle with his environment and his fellowmen, that is to say economy, technology, as well as society and the 'spiritual aspects' (namely religion, art, knowledge)' (p. 5). The changes brought about in these elements of 'culture' through European influences dating from the early contact period to ca. 1952 is the dominant theme of this source, and is given particular attention in the first part of this work. Here the effects of culture contact are discussed in terms of the Tongans themselves (e.g., health care, diseases, care of the body, clothing and adornment, etc.), their social order (marriage and the family), village life (settlement and community structure, social stratification), political structure, economic life (dwellings, nutrition, copra production, handicrafts, division of labor, transportation, money), religion, fine arts and games, and the general attitude of the Tongans themselves to cultural change. In the second part of the work a more general discussion is presented on cultural change in terms of comparable changes in other societies--Samoa, Fijians, and the Buganda of Africa. From these comparisons the author concludes that the cultural changes that have taken place in Tongan society as the result of European contacts are not necessarily unique to Tonga alone, but as a matter of fact, seem to have affected all three societies in comparison in a very similar manner. The concluding section of the original work dealing the general problems of cultural change among primitive people as the result of European influence, pages 332-251, has not been translated for the files.

HRAF PubDate

2006

Region

Oceania

Sub Region

Polynesia

Document Type

book chapter

Evaluation

Creator Type

Ethnologist

Document Rating

4: Excellent Secondary Data

5: Excellent Primary Data

Analyst

John Beierle; 1978

Field Date

1951-1952

Coverage Date

1770s-1951

Coverage Place

Islands of Nomuka, Lifuka, 'Uiha, and Tongatapu, Tonga

Notes

Gerd Koch

Translation of [Südsee gestern und heute; der Kulturwandel bei den Tonganern und der Versuch einer Deutung dieser Entwicklung]

The original German text is not included

Includes bibliographical references (p. 498-504)

Translated fron the German for the Human Relations Area Files by Frieda Schütze in 1978

LCCN

57034004

LCSH

Tongans