Product Description: Materials play a central role in society. Beyond the physical and chemical properties of materials, their cultural properties have often been overlooked in anthropological studies: finished products have been perceived as 'social' yet the materials which comprise them are considered 'raw' or natural'...read more

Product Description: Quilts generically known as tivaivai have been produced by women in the Cook Islands, the Hawaiian Islands, the Society Islands and elsewhere in Eastern Polynesia since the late 19th century, where they were a substitute for bark-cloth but also used in ways deeply invested in the new context of Christian domesticity...read more

Product Description: A lavishly illustrated survey of Pacific fiber art, with a stunning compilation of contemporary, archival, and museum images—an indispensable sourcebook for artists, craftspeople, designers, and architects.Many of the most appealing and flamboyant designs of the human imagination have been expressed in the form of patterns...read more

Product Description: In recent years, there has been a spate of books theorizing fashion. Few, however, take on board the artefactual nature of cloth. In contrast, costume historians have looked closely at garments, but have shown less concern with how clothing is informed by social structures...read more

Shortlisted for the Katharine Briggs Folkore Award 2003Malanggan are among the most treasured possessions in the Pacific, yet they continue to confound anthropologists. Central to funerals in New Ireland, these 'death' figures are intended to decompose as symbolic representations of the dead. Wrapped in images that are conceived of as 'skins', they are both visually complex and intriguing. This book is the first to interpret these mysterious agents of resemblance and connection as having a cognitive rather than a linguistic basis. Found in nearly every ethnographic museum in the world, Malanggan collections have been left virtually untouched. This original study begins by tracing the history of the collections and moves on to consider the role these artefacts play in sacrifice, ritual and exchange. What is the relationship between Malanggan and memory? How can Malanggan be understood as a life force as well as a vehicle for thought? In an analysis of the cognitive aspects of Malanggan, Küchler offers a highly original conceptualization of the centrality of the knot as a mode of being, thinking and binding in the Pacific. Malanggan: Art, Memory and Sacrifice is a groundbreaking study. Based on fifteen years of fieldwork and collection research, it provides an incisive new take on one of the Pacific's classic puzzles, as well as a wealth of new information and resources for anthropologists, collectors and curators alike. (view table of contents)

Product Description: In tracing the process through which monuments give rise to collective memories, this path-breaking book emphasizes that memorials are not just inert and amnesiac spaces upon which individuals may graft their ever-shifting memories...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)