WEEK THREE

Mitchell, Andrew. “Vanishing Edens” chapter 9 of A Fragile Paradise: Nature and Man in the Pacific. London: Fontana/Collins, 1989. journey from Solomons to Easter Island, chronicling development and degradation. Focus on Moorea.

Kahn, Miriam. "Tahiti Intertwined: Ancestral Land, Tourist Postcard, and Nuclear Test Site," American Anthropologist 102 no. 1 7-26, March 2000.
In this essay the author applies ideas about "thirdspace or space beyond dualisms" to the historical and contemporary image of Tahiti.

WEEK FOUR

Howe, K.R. Nature, Culture, and History: the “Knowing” of Oceania. Honolulu: University of Hawai’I Press, 2000. “This book considers processes of “seeing” and “knowing” by discussing concepts of nature, culture, and history with reference to Oceania. A nice complement to deBotton’s The Art of Travel.

WEEK FIVE

Levy, Robert I. Tahitians, Mind and Experience in the Society Islands. University of Chicago Press, Chicago: 1973.
Another classic, this time an ethnography of two Tahitian communities (ethnographic present=1961) with focus on public/private space, physicality, health/healing, sexuality, and community life. A strong psychological bias that may be off-putting but also, not without interesting observations about life in the Society Islands and on Huahine at that time.