Oceania: An Introduction to the Cultures and Identities of Pacific Islanders

[Pamela J. Stewart] and [Andrew Strathern] provide the volume's aim: "... to provide an overview of ethnography, history, and contemporary changes in a broad range of societies across the Pacific region" (p. 3). They say that their intended audience is undergraduate college students; however, knowing that the average college/university student already finds Mela/Micro/Polynesia sufficiently hard to keep straight, I would rather that Strathern and Stewart had either used the traditional terms, or had taken the more sophisticated approach of avoiding this classificatory problem altogether. They state that "contemporary processes," "common ethnographic themes" and "dynamic differences" in Oceania as a whole are their primary interest (p. 4). Actually organizing the book around these concepts, rather than according to geographic areas (whatever one might call them), would have provided a unique treatment of Oceanic ethnography. Additionally, in their Introduction, Stewart and Strathern note that they "...have written this book in the conviction that this Pacific world...is a world worth knowing, as much today as it was perceived to be by its earlier explorers, whether captains of ships or writers of books" (p. 3). While I agree with this, I also wonder why they feel they need to make this statement. The underlying issue is not how "worth knowing" Pacific cultures are, but the noxious habit of Westerners' judging other cultures as more or less interesting and therefore worth knowing in direct correlation with how "exotic" they appear to be. I wonder which audience Stewart and Strathern are trying to convince of the value of knowing contemporary Pacific cultures: students, their own colleagues, or the general public? The pictures seem like archival footage, frequently focussing on ritual moments-the National Geographic type of native (Lutz and Collins, Ch.5), strangely dressed, frightening or scowling, and more often than not, nameless: "a female mourner," "a male dancer," "a newly married bride," "a younger man."