Family and Gender in the Pacific

Domestic Contradictions and the Colonial Impact

Margaret Jolly, Martha Macintyre

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN:
  9780521131773
• eBook ISBN:
  9781139382304
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

The combined forces of mission evangelism and colonial intervention have transformed the everyday family life of Pacific peoples. The dramatic changes that affected the political and economic autonomy of indigenous people in the region also had significant effects on domestic life. This book, originally published in 1989, examines the ways in which this happened. Using the insights of history and anthropology, chapters cover a wide range of geographical range, extending from Hawaii to Australia. The authors examine changes in medicine and health, religious beliefs, architecture and settlement, and the restructuring of the domestic realm. The book raises issues of concern to a wide range of interests: the peoples and history of the Pacific, the broader questions of colonialism and missionary endeavour, and the changing structure of the family.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Map of main island groups of the Pacific
• Map of Papua New Guinea – Provinces
• Introduction
• New England missionary wives, Hawaiian women and ‘The Cult of True Womanhood’
• Changes in the lives of ordinary women in early post-contact Hawaii
• Domestic structures and polyandry in the Marquesas Islands
• The object lesson of a civilised, Christian home
• Medical care and gender in Papua New Guinea
• Suffer the children: Wesleyans in the D'Entrecasteaux
• Women in contemporary Central Enga society, Papua New Guinea
• Better homes and gardens
• God, ghosts and people: Christianity and social organisation among Takuru Wiru
• Sins of a mission: Christian life as Kwaio traditionalist ideology
• Sacred spaces: churches, men's houses and households in South Pentecost, Vanuatu
• Bond-slaves of Satan: Aboriginal women and the missionary dilemma
• Bibliography
• Index