Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T23:01:03.041Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

From Prestige Goods to Legacies: Property and the Objectification of Culture in Melanesia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2000

Simon Harrison
Affiliation:
School of Social and Community Sciences, University of Ulster, Coleraine

Abstract

A great deal of research over the past decade or so has been concerned with understanding the processes of objectification of “custom” or “traditional culture” in Melanesia and other parts of the South Pacific, reifications which have accompanied, or are accompanying, the emergence of new ethnic and national identities (see, for instance, Jolly and Thomas 1992b; Keesing and Tonkinson 1982; Linnekin and Poyer 1990a; Norton 1993). As Foster (1992:284) among others has noted, colonialism has been viewed in much of this research as the key factor giving rise to these hypostatisations of culture, especially hypostatisations involving objectifications of entire “traditional” ways of life as cultural wholes.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2000 Society for Comparative Study of Society and History

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)