Description
This volume explores cultural, social and economic connections between the Americas and the South Pacific. It reaches beyond Sino-American collaborations to focus on rather neglected, and sometimes invisible, Southern linkages, asking how these connections originated and have developed over time, which local responses they have generated, and what impact these processes have in the region in terms of representational forms and strategies, new cultural practices, and empowerment of individuals in (post)colonial contexts. The volume also compares and contrasts intriguing parallels of politics and identity formation. By extending the focus beyond East Asia to the Southern Pacific region, including Island connections with the Americas, the volume provides a more comprehensive understanding of recent dynamics and shifting relations across the Pacific. By approaching the Transpacific Americas as an assemblage or relational space, which is created and becomes meaningful through multiple localities and their translocal connections, the book complicates the Euro-American distinction between "centre" and "rim". While the collection offers a distinctive geographical focus, it simultaneously emphasizes the translocal qualities of specific locations through their entanglements in transpacific assemblages within and across cultural, social and economic spheres. Furthermore, without neglecting the inextricable, historical dimension of anthropological perspectives, the focus is on the diverse and unexpected contemporary forms of cultural, social and economic encounters and engagements, and on (re)emerging Indigenous networks. Primarily based on empirical research, the volume explores face-to-face encounters, relations "from below," and transcultural interactions and relationships in, as well as ideas and conceptualizations of, cultural spaces across localities that have long been perceived as separate, but are indeed closely interconnected.
Table of Contents
Transpacific Americas as Relational Space Philipp Schorch and Eveline Dürr Part 1: Assembling Transpacific Networks and Relations 1. Historicising the "Indigenous International": Museums, Anthropology, and Transpacific Networks Conal McCarthy 2. Performing Transpacific Identities: The Role of Music and Musicians in Interactions Between Easter Island and Chile Dan Bendrups 3. Shadowed Lives: Invisibility and Visibility of Mexicans in Hawai’i Monisha Das Gupta 4. Border Crossings and Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Touring Exhibition: An Aotearoa New Zealand – Mexico Exchange Lee Davidson Part 2: Assembling Transpacific Concepts and Ideas 5. Transpacific Discourses of Primitivism and Extinction on "Fuegians" and "Tasmanians" in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Fernanda Peñaloza 6. Re-assembling Language in Nests: Transpacific Indigenous Strategies for Cultural Revitalisation in Aotearoa New Zealand and Mexico Eveline Dürr 7. Disjunctive Policy Assemblages: The New Zealand Model of Welfare Reform in Alberta, Canada Catherine Kingfisher 8. Tangled up in Food: The Moral Economy of Food Politics in the Transpacific Region Alan Smart and Josephine Smart Taualuga: Decolonising and Globalising the Pacific Vilsoni Hereniko
