scholarly journals Cultural history of the Pacific and the bark cloth making in Central Sulawesi

2021 ◽  
pp. 202-216
Author(s):  
Eija-Maija Kotilainen
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Religious Rituals ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Linguistic Evidence ◽  
Cloth Production ◽  
History Of ◽  
Important Position ◽  
Central Sulawesi

Archaeologists, anthropologists and linguists are now in general agreement about the prehistory of the Austronesian-speakers, but most details are still obscure. The Philippines and the eastern part of Indonesia have received very little attention in research into the cultures of the Pacific region and the settling of the area by the Austronesian peoples. Based on ethnographical and linguistic evidence, bark cloth making has generally been regarded as a common feature of early Austronesian culture. Ethnography informs us that bark cloth making was known in large areas of Southeast Asia and Oceania, and also in Africa and Central and South America. The importance and position of bark cloth as part of the culture of the Austronesian people is illustrated by the persistence of its manufacture in many places. In this paper I examine in some detail the bark cloth production of the Kaili-Pamona speakers in Central Sulawesi (Celebes) and discuss how the study of their bark cloth may add to research into the cultural history of the Austronesian peoples. I argue that the vitality and important position of bark cloth as part of the culture of the Austronesian peoples is largely due to its central role in religious rituals and social practices. Thus, it is associated with the most sacred powers which represent the continuity and immortality of the society.

scholarly journals The Origin and Evolution of Pacific Island Biotas, New Guinea to Eastern Polynesia: Patterns and Processes

1997 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 408
Author(s):  
Jonathan D. Majer
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Hot Spot ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
Origin And Evolution ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
History Of ◽  
Number Of Publications ◽  
Patterns And Processes ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Tropical Pacific

A number of publications have considered the biogeography of various subsets of the Pacific Region, including the earlier works by J. L. Gressitt (Pacific Basin Biogeography) and by F. J. Radovsky and others (Biogeography of the Tropical Pacific). In addition to these, substantial edited volumes have been produced on the Biogeography and Ecology of New Guinea (by J. L. Gressitt), on Biogeography and Ecology in Australia (by A. Keast), on the relationship between these two regions in Bridge and Barrier: The Natural and Cultural History of the Torres Strait (by D. Walker) and on Hawaiian Biogeography: Evolution of a Hot Spot Archipelago (by W. L. Wagner and V. A. Funk). A substantial list of papers, reviews and symposia also pertain to the biogeography of this region.

Empires of the Senses

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew J. Rotter
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Sensory History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Senses ◽  
History Of Empire ◽  
The Right ◽  
Right Order

This book offers a sensory history of the British in India from the formal imposition of their rule to its end and the Americans in the Philippines from annexation to independence. A social and cultural history of empire, it focuses on quotidian life. It analyzes how the senses created mutual impressions of the agents of imperialism and their subjects and highlights connections between apparently disparate items, including the lived experience of empire, the otherwise unremarkable comments (and complaints) found in memoirs and reports, the appearance of lepers, the sound of bells, the odor of excrement, the feel of cloth against skin, the first taste of a mango or meat spiced with cumin. Men and women in imperial India and the Philippines had different ideas from the start about what looked, sounded, smelled, felt, and tasted good or bad. Both the British and the Americans saw themselves as the civilizers of what they judged backward societies and believed that a vital part of the civilizing process was to put the senses in the right order of priority and to ensure them against offense or affront. People without manners who respected the senses lacked self-control; they were uncivilized and thus unfit for self-government. Societies that looked shabby, were noisy and smelly, felt wrong, and consumed unwholesome food in unmannerly ways were not prepared to form independent polities and stand on their own. It was the duty of allegedly more sensorily advanced westerners to put the senses right before withdrawing the most obvious manifestations of their power.

Arc of Containment

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wen-Qing Ngoei
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Chinese Diaspora ◽  
American Empire ◽  
Pacific War ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
History Of ◽  
Colonial Order ◽  
The Cold War

This book recasts the history of American empire in Southeast and East Asia from the Pacific War through the end of U.S. intervention in Vietnam. It argues that anticommunist nationalism in Southeast Asia intersected with pre-existing local antipathy toward China and the Chinese diaspora to usher the region from European-dominated colonialism into U.S. hegemony. Between the late 1940s and 1960s, Britain and its indigenous collaborators in Malaya and Singapore overcame the mostly Chinese communist parties of both countries by crafting a pro-West nationalism that was anticommunist by virtue of its anti-Chinese bent. London’s neocolonial schemes in Malaya and Singapore prolonged its influence in the region. But as British power waned, Malaya and Singapore’s anticommunist leaders cast their lot with the United States, mirroring developments in the Philippines, Thailand and, in the late 1960s, Indonesia. In effect, these five anticommunist states established, with U.S. support, a geostrategic arc of containment that encircled China and its regional allies. Southeast Asia’s imperial transition from colonial order to U.S. empire, through the tumult of decolonization and the Cold War, was more characteristic of the region’s history after 1945 than Indochina’s embrace of communism.

scholarly journals The television families of Mexico and the Philippines: dynasties and caciques in transpacific media cultures

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 136-141
Author(s):  
Anna Cristina Pertierra
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Television Programs ◽  
Commercial Television ◽  
Spanish Colonial ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Role ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Media

Metaphors of family play a particular part in representing and justifying the public role of elite families and media empires in Mexico and the Philippines, two countries on opposite sides of the Pacific that feature linked histories of Spanish colonial heritage and intimate connections to the cultural and economic history of the modern United States. The media industries of Mexico and the Philippines share some important characteristics: powerful commercial television networks are operated by prominent elite family companies, whose multimedia empires wield political and economic influence nationwide. An industry model of elite family dominance is reflected in the ways that contemporary television programs, hosts, and viewers understand themselves as belonging to sorts of ‘television families’. The nature of Mexican and Philippine television industries as family businesses writ large merits more extensive comparative historical exploration. These parallel cases draw attention to how media may be productively compared and studied across the Pacific regions of Asia and the Americas.

Progress and Backwardness in Book Accumulation: Bancroft, Basadre, and Their Libraries

2014 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 995-1026
Author(s):  
Ricardo D. Salvatore
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
World Economy ◽  
Socioeconomic Development ◽  
National Library ◽  
High Culture ◽  
Cultural Patrimony ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

AbstractThe essay examines the conditions of book accumulation in two places in the world economy, California and Peru, through the narratives left by book collector Hubert Bancroft and librarian and historian Jorge Basadre. A reading of these reveals the complex interrelations between socioeconomic development and cultural accumulation. In California, Bancroft turned his fortune accumulated through business into a unique book collection and this, in turn, was placed at the service of a “factory of history” that produced a multivolume “History of the Pacific States of North America.” In the Peruvian case, after a fire destroyed most of the collections of the National Library of Lima, historian Basadre directed an effort of reconstruction that led him to reflect upon the state's neglect of cultural patrimony, popular disdain for high culture, and Peru's long tradition of exporting books and documents to foreign collectors and libraries. Basadre's reflections speak of the position of a peripheral intellectual within a context of underdevelopment. I examine the centripetal logic of book accumulation and call for further engagement with this neglected side of cultural history.

The Power of Images in the Boxer Codex and Cultural Convergence in Early Spanish Manila

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Hsieh
Keyword(s):  
Spanish Text ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Ethnic Composition ◽  
Artistic Style ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
History Of ◽  
Analysis Of The Images ◽  
Interdisciplinary Study

The Boxer Codex is one of the most important documents for the study of the history of the Philippines. Produced in the late sixteenth century, the colorful illustrations of the manuscript offer some of the earliest images of people living in the archipelago and its Asian neighbors at the time. Although the codex, especially its illustrations, has been cited in a variety of Philippine studies, the manuscript has not been examined carefully as an integrated document, combining an analysis of the images and the text. This interdisciplinary study synthesizes methods derived from history, art history, anthropology, and archaeology to focus on the illustrations of the Boxer Codex in terms of both the structure, content, composition, and artistic style and the correlation between the Spanish text and Chinese characters within their historical context. I suggest that the manuscript was designed to promote and justify the Spanish enterprise in the Pacific rather than to present an objective ethnographic record of people in the region. Nonetheless, the Boxer Codex documents cultural exchange and artistic hybridity in early colonial Manila, reflecting the complex ethnic composition of Spain's most distant colony.

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