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.

eBook - PDF
Creating a Nation with Cloth
Women, Wealth, and Tradition in the Tongan Diaspora
- 239 pages
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF
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Table of contents
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction — Nation, Cloth, Diaspora: Locating Langa Fonua
- Chapter 1 — Migration, Tradition, and Barkcloth: Authentic Innovations in Textile Gifts
- Chapter 2 — Gender, Materiality, and Value: Tongan Women's Cooperatives in New Zealand
- Chapter 3 — Women, Roots, and Routes: Life Histories and Life Paths
- Chaper 4 — Gender, Kinship, and Economics: Transacting in Prestige and Complex Ceremonial Gifts
- Chapter 5 — Cash, Death, and Diaspora: When Koloa Won't Do
- Chapter 6 — Church, Cash, and Competition: Multicentrism and Modern Religion
- Conclusion — Moving, Dwelling, and Transforming Spaces
- Glossary of Polynesian Terms
- References
- Index
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Yes, you can access Creating a Nation with Cloth by Ping-Ann Addo in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & Cultural & Social Anthropology. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.