Identity through History Living Stories in a Solomon Islands Society [Hardcover]

This book is about the construction of cultural identity through narratives of shared history.This book is about the construction of cultural identity through narratives of shared history. It presents an anthropological study of processes of identity formation in a Solomon Islands society deeply affected by colonisation and Christianization.This book is about the construction of cultural identity through narratives of shared history. It presents an anthropological study of processes of identity formation in a Solomon Islands society deeply affected by colonisation and Christianization.For people who live in small communities transformed by powerful outside forces, narrative accounts of culture contact and change create images of collective identity through the idiom of shared history. How may we understand the processes that make such accounts compelling for those who tell them? Why do some narratives acquire a kind of mythic status as they are told and retold in a variety of contexts and genres? Identity Through History attempts to explain how identity formation developed among the people of Santa Isabel in the Solomon Islands who were victimized by raiding headhunters in the nineteenth century, and then embraced Christianity around the turn of the century. Making innovative use of work in psychological and historical anthropology, Geoffrey White shows how these significant events were crucial to the community's view of itself in shifting social and political circumstances.Acknowledgments; 1. Introduction; Part I. Orientations: 2. First encounters; 3. Portraits of the past; 4. Chiefs, persons and power; Part II. Transformations: 5. Crisis and Christianity; 6. Conversions and consolidation; Part III. Narrations: 7. Becoming Christian: playing with history; 8. Missionary encounters: narrating the self; Part IV. Revitalization: 9. Collisions and convergence; 10. The paramount chief: rites of renewal; 11. Conclusion; Notes; References. Identity Through History is lƒo