Category: Pacific

UHP in Washington, DC | Native American and Indigenous Studies Association Conference

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82ca886f-033c-47fa-8716-dd8d086db199Native American and Indigenous Studies Association
2015 Conference

June 4-6, 2015 | Washington, DC
Find more information here.
Contact mpd4@hawaii.edu for an editor meeting

 

 

 

 

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Articulating Rapa Nui: Polynesian Cultural Politics in a Latin American Nation-State
Riet Delsing

304 pages
Cloth | 978-0-8248-5168-2 | $59.00

Huihui: Navigating Art and Literature in the Pacific
Jeffrey Carroll, Brandy Nalani McDougall, and Georganne Nordstrom

320 pages
Paper | 978-0-8248-3895-9 | $29.00

The Pearl Frontier: Indonesian Labor and Indigenous Encounters in Australia’s Northern Trading Network
Julia Martínez and Adrian Vickers

240 pages
Cloth | 978-0-8248-4002-0 | $50.00

The Pacific Festivals of Aotearoa New Zealand: Negotiating Place and Identity in a New Homeland
Jared Mackley-Crump

232 pages
Cloth | 978-0-8248-3871-3 | $58.00

Hawaiian Historical Society hosts UHP author John R. K. Clark

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JohnClark
Author John R. K. Clark turns to the Hawaiian newspaper archives to create rich reference guides filled with primary resource accounts of places in Hawai’i — his latest title, North Shore Place Names, comes from a lifelong passion for surfing and fascination with Hawai’i’s home of legendary winter swells. This title is an important example of one of many transitions in research style for scholars of Hawai’i — please take a look at his Hawaiian Historical Society lecture by clicking on the image to the left.

His latest title, North Shore Place Names, can be found on our web store.

Kuaaina Kahiko: Life and Land in Ancient Kahikinui, Maui

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KirchCOVER1c.indd

In early Hawai‘i, kua‘āina were the hinterlands inhabited by nā kua‘āina, or country folk. Often these were dry, less desirable areas where much skill and hard work were required to wrest a living from the lava landscapes. The ancient district of Kahikinui in southeast Maui is such a kua‘āina and remains one of the largest tracts of undeveloped land in the islands. Named after Tahiti Nui in the Polynesian homeland, its thousands of pristine acres house a treasure trove of archaeological ruins—witnesses to the generations of Hawaiians who made this land their home before it was abandoned in the late nineteenth century.

Kua‘āina Kahiko follows kama‘āina archaeologist Patrick Vinton Kirch on a seventeen-year-long research odyssey to rediscover the ancient patterns of life and land in Kahikinui. Through painstaking archaeological survey and detailed excavations, Kirch and his students uncovered thousands of previously undocumented ruins of houses, trails, agricultural fields, shrines, and temples. Kirch describes how, beginning in the early fifteenth century, Native Hawaiians began to permanently inhabit the rocky lands along the vast southern slope of Haleakalā. Eventually these planters transformed Kahikinui into what has been called the greatest continuous zone of dryland planting in the Hawaiian Islands. He relates other fascinating aspects of life in ancient Kahikinui, such as the capture and use of winter rains to create small wet-farming zones, and decodes the complex system of heiau, showing how the orientations of different temple sites provide clues to the gods to whom they were dedicated. 

Kirch examines the sweeping changes that transformed Kahikinui after European contact, including how some maka’āinana families fell victim to unscrupulous land agents. But also woven throughout the book is the saga of Ka ‘Ohana o Kahikinui, a grass-roots group of Native Hawaiians who successfully struggled to regain access to these Hawaiian lands. Rich with ancedotes of Kirch’s personal experiences over years of field research, Kua’āina Kahiko takes the reader into the little-known world of the ancient kua‘āina.

Written by Patrick Vinton Kirch

2014 | 336 pages | 80 illustrations, 5 maps
ISBN: 978-0-8248-3955-0 | $49.00 | Cloth

Gender on the Edge: Transgender, Gay, and Other Pacific Islanders

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Besnier-GenderTransgender identities and other forms of gender and sexuality that transcend the normative pose important questions about society, culture, politics, and history. They force us to question, for example, the forces that divide humanity into two gender categories and render them necessary, inevitable, and natural. The transgender also exposes a host of dynamics that, at first glance, have little to do with gender or sex, such as processes of power and domination; the complex relationship among agency, subjectivity, and structure; and the mutual constitution of the global and the local.

Particularly intriguing is the fact that gender and sexual diversity appear to be more prevalent in some regions of the world than in others. Gender on the Edge is an exploration of the ways in which non-normative gendering and sexuality in one such region, the Pacific Islands, are implicated in a wide range of socio-cultural dynamics that are at once local and global, historical, and contemporary. The authors recognize that different social configurations, cultural contexts, and historical trajectories generate diverse ways of being transgender across the societies of the region, but they also acknowledge that these differences are overlaid with commonalities and predictabilities.

Edited by Niko Besnier and Kalissa Alexeyeff

2014 | 408 pages | 20 illustrations | 2 maps
ISBN: 978-0-8248-3882-9 | $65.00s | Cloth
ISBN: 978-0-8248-3883-6 | $35.00s | Paper

Not for sale in East and Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand

Local Story: The Massie-Kahahawai Case and the Culture of History

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Rosa-REVThe Massie-Kahahawai case of 1931–1932 shook the Territory of Hawai‘i to its very core. Thalia Massie, a young Navy wife, alleged that she had been kidnapped and raped by “some Hawaiian boys” in Waikīkī. A few days later, five young men stood accused of her rape. Mishandling of evidence and contradictory testimony led to a mistrial, but before a second trial could be convened, one of the accused, Horace Ida, was kidnapped and beaten by a group of Navy men and a second, Joseph Kahahawai, lay dead from a gunshot wound. Thalia’s husband, Thomas Massie; her mother, Grace Fortescue; and two Navy men were convicted of the lesser charge of manslaughter, despite witnesses who saw them kidnap Kahahawai and the later discovery of his body in Massie’s car. Under pressure from Congress and the Navy, territorial governor Lawrence McCully Judd commuted their sentences. After spending only an hour in the governor’s office at ‘Iolani Palace, the four were set free.

Local Story is a close examination of how Native Hawaiians, Asian immigrants, and others responded to challenges posed by the military and federal government during the case’s investigation and aftermath. In addition to providing a concise account of events as they unfolded, the book shows how this historical narrative has been told and retold in later decades to affirm a local identity among descendants of working-class Native Hawaiians, Asians, and others—in fact, this understanding of the term “local” in the islands dates from the Massie-Kahahawai case. It looks at the racial and sexual tensions in pre–World War II Hawai‘i that kept local men and white women apart and at the uneasy relationship between federal and military officials and territorial administrators. Lastly, it examines the revival of interest in the case in the last few decades: true crime accounts, a fictionalized TV mini-series, and, most recently, a play and a documentary—all spurring the formation of new collective memories about the Massie-Kahahawai case. 

Written by John P. Rosa

2014 | 176 pages
Cloth 978-0-8248-2825-7, $45.00
Paper 978-0-8248-3970-3, $19.99

The Value of Hawai‘i 2 Launches New Volume with Community Events

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The Value of Hawai'i 2Continuing the conversations started in the first volume of this series, The Value of Hawai‘i 2: Ancestral Roots, Oceanic Visions offers passionate and poignant visions for the future of Hawai‘i. The fresh voices gathered in this collection of essays, poetry, and art share their inspiring work and ideas for protecting and creating wai wai, value, for coming generations. The volume editors, Aiko Yamashiro and Noelani Goodyear-Kaʻōpua, together with over forty contributors, address a wide range of topics: community health, agriculture, public education, local business, energy, gender, rural lifestyles, sacred community, activism, storytelling, migration, voyaging, visual art, music, and the ‘āina. By exploring connections to those who have come before and those who will follow after, the contributors to this volume re-center Hawai‘i in our watery Pacific world.

Please come out to support these visions at planned community events cosponsored by UHM Center for Biographical Research and the Hawai‘i Council for the Humanities. The first events start tonight with a collaboration with an exciting contemporary art exhibition, CONTACT. All discussion events are free and will take place at the Front Lawn at Honolulu Museum of Art School at Linekona, 1111 Victoria Street. Click here for the CONTACT events program.

Friday, April 11, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm
Jamaica Osorio – Gender in the Arts

Tuesday, April 15, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm
Cade Watanabe – Labor and the Arts

Wednesday, April 16, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm
Mark Kāwika Patterson – Prisons and Sanctuaries

Thursday, April 17 –  CANCELLED –TVoH2-BookLaunch_4-23-2014
Sania Fa’amaile Betty P. Ickes – Oceanic Connections

Monday, April 21, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm
Joseph Keawe’aimoku Kaholokula – Health and Inequality

Other events scheduled so far:

Wednesday, April 23, 5:30 pm – 7:30 pm
Join us at the Book Launch celebration at UHM Kamakakūokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies.

Saturday, May 3, 9:30 am – 2:00 pm
Hawai‘i Book & Music Festival
A series of panels will be held at the Authors Pavilion Mauka. Click here for the festival event schedule.

Keep up with more information about the book and upcoming events on The Value of Hawai‘i website and Facebook page; follow @valuehawaii for Twitter updates.

The Kanak Awakening: The Rise of Nationalism in New Caledonia

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In The Kanak Awakening, David Chappell examines the rise in New Caledonia of rival identity formations that became increasingly polarized in the 1970s. It explores in particular the emergence of activist discourses in favor of Kanak cultural nationalism and land reform, multiracial progressive sovereignty, or a combination of both aspirations. Most studies of modern New Caledonia focus on the violent 1980s uprising, which left deep scars on local memories and identities. Yet the genesis of that rebellion began with a handful of university students who painted graffiti on public buildings in 1969, and such activists discussed many of the same issues that face the country’s leadership today.

“This is a very valuable contribution to the literature on New Caledonia’s recent history and the search for Kanak identity in a world of decolonization. The author shows an excellent command of the literature, not only the discussions leading up to the ‘Melanesia 2000’ event but the long archaeological and anthropological record. It is a valuable synthesis of the ways in which the political and the cultural have connected to produce and interesting experiment of decolonization without independence.” —John Kim Munholland, Professor Emeritus, Department of History, University of Minnesota

November 2013 | 352 pages | 7 illustrations
ISBN: 978-0-8248-3818-8 | $60.00 | Cloth
Pacific Islands Monograph Series No. 27

Mutiny and Aftermath: James Morrison’s Account of the Mutiny on the Bounty and the Island of Tahiti

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Smith&Thomas-Mutiny-and-AftermathThe mutiny on the Bounty was one of the most controversial events of eighteenth-century maritime history. Mutiny and Aftermath publishes a full and absorbing narrative of the events by one of the participants, the boatswain’s mate James Morrison, who tells the story of the mounting tensions over the course of the voyage out to Tahiti, the fascinating encounter with Polynesian culture there, and the shocking drama of the event itself. It is based directly on a close study of Morrison’s original manuscript, one of the treasures of the Mitchell Library in Sydney, Australia.

The editors, Vanessa Smith and Nicholas Thomas, assess and explain Morrison’s observations of Islander culture and social relations, both on Tubuai in the Austral Islands and on Tahiti itself. The book fully identifies the Tahitian people and places that Morrison refers to and makes this remarkable text accessible for the first time to all those interested in an extraordinary chapter of early Pacific history.

“Morrison’s Account of the Mutiny on the Bounty has been known to scholars and students through Owen Rutter’s 1935 edition. Smith and Thomas draw on all the relevant scholarship in the seventy-five years since this edition, as well as their own distinguished research and expert understanding of Pacific cultures, to provide readers with an impeccable work of scholarship that will be an essential point of reference for all future writing on Tahiti at the time of first contact as well as on the Bounty mutiny itself.”—Rod Edmond, University of Kent

October 2013 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3676-4 / $45.00 cloth

Michael French Smith at the National Press Club’s Book Fair & Author Night

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NatlPressClub-bookfair&authorsOn Tuesday, November 19, 5:30-8:30 p.m., the National Press Club will hold its 36th Annual Book Fair & Author Night at the NPC headquarters in Washington, D.C. (529 14th Street NW). UH Press author Michael French Smith will sign copies of his latest book, A Faraway, Familiar Place: An Anthropologist Returns to Papua New Guinea, joining more than 90 other writers, including national luminaries Alice McDermott, Jim Lehrer, Mark Leibovich, Gov. Bill Richardson, David Wiesner, and many others, in this exciting literary event.

The book fair is open to the public with ticket purchase and is a fundraiser for the NPC’s Journalism Institute. Books will be sold in partnership with independent D.C. bookstore Politics & Prose. For more details, click here.

Colonialism, Maasina Rule, and the Origins of Malaitan Kastom

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Colonialism, Maasina RuleColonialism, Maasina Rule, and the Origins of Malaitan Kastom is a political history of the island of Malaita in the British Solomon Islands Protectorate from 1927, when the last violent resistance to colonial rule was crushed, to 1953 and the inauguration of the island’s first representative political body, the Malaita Council. At the book’s heart is a political movement known as Maasina Rule, which dominated political affairs in the southeastern Solomons for many years after World War II. The movement’s ideology, kastom, was grounded in the determination that only Malaitans themselves could properly chart their future through application of Malaitan sensibilities and methods, free from British interference.

Kastom promoted a radical transformation of Malaitan lives by sweeping social engineering projects and alternative governing and legal structures. When the government tried to suppress Maasina Rule through force, its followers brought colonial administration on the island to a halt for several years through a labor strike and massive civil resistance actions that overflowed government prison camps. David Akin draws on extensive archival and field research to present a practice-based analysis of colonial officers’ interactions with Malaitans in the years leading up to and during Maasina Rule.

2013, 552 pages, 21 illustrations, 3 maps
$59.00; ISBN: 978-0-8248-3814-0, Cloth
Pacific Islands Monograph Series  (No. 26)

Drinking Smoke: The Tobacco Syndemic in Oceania

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Drinking Smoke: The Tobacco Syndemic in OceaniaTobacco kills 5 million people every year and that number is expected to double by the year 2020. Despite its enormous toll on human health, tobacco has been largely neglected by anthropologists. Drinking Smoke combines an exhaustive search of historical materials on the introduction and spread of tobacco in the Pacific with extensive anthropological accounts of the ways Islanders have incorporated this substance into their lives. In Drinking Smoke, the idea of a syndemic is applied to the current health crisis in the Pacific, where the number of deaths from coronary heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease continues to rise, and the case is made that smoking tobacco in the form of industrially manufactured cigarettes is the keystone of the contemporary syndemic in Oceania.

Drinking Smoke is the first book-length examination of the damaging tobacco syndemic in a specific world region. It is a must-read for scholars and students of anthropology, Pacific studies, history, and economic globalization, as well as for public health practitioners and those working in allied health fields. More broadly the book will appeal to anyone concerned with disease interaction, the social context of disease production, and the full health consequences of the global promotional efforts of Big Tobacco.

2013, 312 pages, 21 illustrations, 4 maps; ISBN: 978-0-8248-3685-6, Cloth $54.00

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