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Paradise remade : the politics of culture and history in Hawai'i
Title
Paradise remade : the politics of culture and history in Hawai'i / Elizabeth Buck.
ISBN
0877229783
1566392004
9781566392006
9780877229780
9781566392006
9781439906088
Publication
Philadelphia : Temple University Press, 1993.
Physical Description
1 online resource (viii, 242 pages) : illustrations
Local Notes
Access is available to the Yale community.
Notes
Electronic text and image data. Ann Arbor, Mich. : University of Michigan, Michigan Publishing, 2022. EPUB file. ([ACLS Humanities E-Book])
Access and use
Access restricted by licensing agreement.
Summary
This is a book about the politics of competing cultures and myths in a colonized nation. Relying on Althusserian Marxist theory, Elizabeth Buck considers the transformation of Hawaiian culture, with a focus on the indigenous population rather than on the colonizers. In Paradise Remade, the author reframes Hawaiian history, focusing on how Hawaii's established religious, social, political, and economic relationships have changed in the past two hundred years as a result of Western imperialism. This account of the politics of island culture and history is particularly timely in light of current Hawaiian demands for sovereignty one hundred years after the overthrow of the monarchy in 1893. Drawing on a wide range of critical theories of social structure and change, language and discourse, and practices of representation, Buck examines the social transformation of Hawaii from a complex hierarchical, oral society to an American state dominated by corporate tourism and its myths of paradise. She pays particular attention to how contemporary Hawaiians are challenging the use of their traditions as the basis for exoticized entertainments by establishing new institutions such as hula halau (schools) and the annual hula competition of the Merrie Monarch Festival to recover their history and culture. Buck demonstrates that sacred chants and hula were an integral part of Hawaiian social life; as the repository of the people's historical memory, chant and hula practices played a vital role in maintaining the links between religious, political, and economic relationships. As colonizers concentrated on transforming the economic and political organization of the islands and missionaries undertook conversion to Christianity, the suppression of these cultural practices became a key element in establishing European dominance. Tracing the ways in which Hawaiian culture has been variously constructed by Western explorers, New England missionaries, the tourist industry, ethnomusicologists, and contemporary Hawaiians, Buck offers a fascinating "rereading" of Hawaiian history.
Variant and related titles
ACLS Humanities E-Book.
Format
Books / Online
Language
English
Added to Catalog
February 15, 2023
Series
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 193-226) and index.
Contents
Ch. 1. Introduction. Competing Myths of Hawaii. History and the Polities of Culture. Hawaiian Historiography
Ch. 2. Thinking about Hawaiian History. Conceptualizing Structural Change: Marxist Perspectives. Language and Power: Poststructuralist Perspectives
Ch. 3. Hawaii before Contact with the West. The Hawaiian Social Structure. Ideological Reproduction. Chant and Hula: At the Ideological Center. Structure and Change before Contact
Ch. 4. Western Penetration and Structural Transformation. The Penetration of Capitalism. Transformation to Capitalism: The Mahele. The New Political-Economy of Sugar. Hawaiian Sovereignty at Risk
Ch. 5. Transformations in Ideological Representations: Chant and Hula. Cultural Interaction in Hawaii. The Intrusion of Western Culture. Changes in Hawaiian Chant and Hula. New Forms of Hawaiian Music. Music and Resistance
Ch. 6. Transformations in Language and Power. The Movement from Orality to Literacy. The Power of Writing. The Displacement of Hawaiian by English. Discourses about Chant and Hula
Ch. 7. Contending Representations of Hawaiian Culture. The Political-Economy of Hawaii in the Twentieth Century. Hawaiian Music and the Industries of Culture. Tourism and Paradise: Appropriating Hawaiian Culture. The Politics of Culture
Hawaii Style. Hawaiians and the Politics of Culture.
Subjects
Also listed under
American Council of Learned Societies.
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