Creating a Nation with Cloth

Women, Wealth, and Tradition in the Tongan Diaspora
1. Auflage 2013
ISBN: 978-0-85745-895-7
Verlag: Berghahn Books

Buch, Englisch, Band 4, 252 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 504 g

Reihe: ASAO Studies in Pacific Anthropology

Tongan women living outside of their island homeland create and use hand-made, sometimes hybridized, textiles to maintain and rework their cultural traditions in diaspora. Central to these traditions is an ancient concept of homeland or nation— fonua—which Tongans retain as an anchor for modern nation-building. Utilizing the concept of the “multi-territorial nation,” the author questions the notion that living in diaspora is mutually exclusive with authentic cultural production and identity. The globalized nation the women build through gifting their barkcloth and fine mats, challenges the normative idea that nations are always geographically bounded or spatially contiguous. The work suggests that, contrary to prevalent understandings of globalization, global resource flows do not always primarily involve commodities. Focusing on first-generation Tongans in New Zealand and the relationships they forge across generations and throughout the diaspora, the book examines how these communities centralize the diaspora by innovating and adapting traditional cultural forms in unprecedented ways.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Addo, Ping-Ann

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde Volkskunde: Sitten, Traditionen, Mythen, Legenden
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Ethnologie Sozialethnologie: Familie, Gender, Soziale Gruppen
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde Historische & Regionale Volkskunde

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements

List of Illustrations

Introduction: Nation, Cloth, and Diaspora: Locating Langa Fonua                                                           

Chapter 1. Migration, Tradition, and Barkcloth: Authentic Innovations in Textile Gifts

Chapter 2. Gender, Materiality, Value: Tongan Women’s Cooperatives in New Zealand

Chapter 3. Women, Roots, and Routes: Life Histories and Life Paths

Chapter 4. Gender, Kinship, Economics: Exchanging Complex Ceremonial Gifts in Diaspora

Chapter 5. Cash, Death, Diaspora: When Koloa Won’t Do

Chapter 6. Church, Cash, Competition: Multi-centrism and Modern Religion

Conclusion:Moving, Dwelling, and Transforming Spaces                                   

Glossary of Polynesian Language Terms

Works Cited

Über Autor(innen)

Addo, Ping-Ann
Ping-Ann Addo is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. She has published in Pacific Studies, Pacific Arts, Reviews in Anthropology, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, and in anthologies on Pacific transnationalism and Pacific clothing. She has also been a visiting scholar at the Center for Art and Public Life at the California College of the Arts.