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The history of Oceania includes the history of Australia, Easter Island, Fiji, Hawaii, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Western New Guinea, and other Pacific island nations.
Melanesia is a subregion of Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It extends from New Guinea in the west to the Fiji Islands in the east, and includes the Arafura Sea.
Cargo cult is an umbrella term to denote various spiritual and political movements that arose among indigenous Melanesians during the early-mid 20th century. The definition of cargo cult is vague, having been used for "almost any sort of organised, village-based social movement with religious and political aspirations" and "a variety of forms of social unrest that ethnographers elsewhere tagged millenarian, messianic, nativistic, vitalistic, revivalistic, or culture-contact or adjustment movements". "Cargo cults" were often organised around a central charismatic prophet, who either pushed for the revival of ancestral traditions or the adoption of new traditions in order to appease ancestral spirits. Although many accounts focus on the aquisition of Western material goods, the definition of "cargo" was broader than this, with many such movements focused on spiritual salvation, or were political expressions of a desire for autonomy. Many scholars see the movements as a reaction to the disruption to traditional ways of life caused by the colonisation of Melanesia during the late 19th century by Western powers and the resulting oppression and discrimination, as well as the contact between traditional gift giving and colonial capitalist economies.
A gift economy or gift culture is a system of exchange where valuables are not sold, but rather given without an explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards. Social norms and customs govern giving a gift in a gift culture; although there is some expectation of reciprocity, gifts are not given in an explicit exchange of goods or services for money, or some other commodity or service. This contrasts with a barter economy or a market economy, where goods and services are primarily explicitly exchanged for value received.
Pacific Islanders, Pasifika, Pasefika, Pacificans or rarely Pacificers are the peoples of the Pacific Islands. As an ethnic/racial term, it is used to describe the original peoples—inhabitants and diasporas—of any of the three major subregions of Oceania.
In cultural anthropology, reciprocity refers to the non-market exchange of goods or labour ranging from direct barter to forms of gift exchange where a return is eventually expected as in the exchange of birthday gifts. It is thus distinct from the true gift, where no return is expected.
Kula, also known as the Kula exchange or Kula ring, is a ceremonial exchange system conducted in the Milne Bay Province of Papua New Guinea. The Kula ring was made famous by Bronisław Malinowski, considered the father of modern anthropology. He used this test case to argue for the universality of rational decision-making and for the cultural nature of the object of their effort. Malinowski's seminal work on the topic, Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922), directly confronted the question, "Why would men risk life and limb to travel across huge expanses of dangerous ocean to give away what appear to be worthless trinkets?" Malinowski carefully traced the network of exchanges of bracelets and necklaces across the Trobriand Islands, and established that they were part of a system of exchange, and that this exchange system was clearly linked to political authority.
Melanesians are the predominant and indigenous inhabitants of Melanesia, in an area stretching from New Guinea to the Fiji Islands. Most speak one of the many languages of the Austronesian language family or one of the many unrelated families of Papuan languages. There are several creoles of the region, such as Tok Pisin, Hiri Motu, Solomon Islands Pijin, Bislama, and Papuan Malay.
Polynesian culture is the culture of the indigenous peoples of Polynesia who share common traits in language, customs and society. The development of Polynesian culture is typically divided into four different historical eras:
Religion in Papua New Guinea is dominated by various branches of Christianity, with traditional animism and ancestor worship often occurring less openly as another layer underneath or more openly side by side with Christianity. The Catholic Church has a plurality of the population. The courts, government, and general society uphold a constitutional right to freedom of speech, thought, and beliefs. A secular state, there is no state religion in the country, although the government openly partners with several Christian groups to provide services, and churches participate in local government bodies.
The Moka is a highly ritualized system of exchange in the Mount Hagen area, Papua New Guinea, that has become emblematic of the anthropological concepts of "gift economy" and of "Big man" political system. Moka are reciprocal gifts of pigs through which social status is achieved. Moka refers specifically to the increment in the size of the gift; giving more brings greater prestige to the giver. However, reciprocal gift giving was confused by early anthropologists with profit-seeking, as the lending and borrowing of money at interest.
Oceanic art or Oceanian art comprises the creative works made by the native people of the Pacific Islands and Australia, including areas as far apart as Hawaii and Easter Island. Specifically it comprises the works of the two groups of people who settled the area, though during two different periods. They would in time however, come to interact and together reach even more remote islands. The area is often broken down into four separate regions: Micronesia, Melanesia, Polynesia and Australia. Australia, along with interior Melanesia (Papua), are populated by descendants of the first waves of human migrations into the region by Australo-Melanesians. Micronesia, Island Melanesia, and Polynesia, on the other hand, are descendants of later Austronesian voyagers who intermixed with native Australo-Melanesians; mostly via the Neolithic Lapita culture. All of the regions in later times would be greatly affected by western influence and colonization. In more recent times, the people of Oceania have found a greater appreciation of their region's artistic heritage.
Melanesian mythology refers to the folklore, myths, and religions of Melanesia, a region in Southwest Oceania that encompasses the archipelagos of New Guinea, the Torres Strait Islands, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia and Fiji. The various mythologies consist primarily of the traditions of oral literature in the different populations of Melanesia. More recent aspects include the cargo cults born in the 20th century during the Pacific War.
Melpa is a Papuan language spoken by about 130,000 people predominantly in Mount Hagen and the surrounding district of Western Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea.
The MSG Prime Minister's Cup, formerly known as Melanesia Cup, is an association football championship played between the Melanesian countries, it was used for qualification to the Oceania Nations Cup. The original tournament used a round-robin format involving every team playing each other once at the tournaments location.
Ongka's Big Moka: The Kawelka of Papua New Guinea is a 1970s documentary film, part of Granada Television's Disappearing World Series which ran from 1969–1993. It was first aired in the UK on 11 December 1974, and was subsequently aired in the US in 1976. Andrew Strathern served as consulting anthropologist for the film.
Polynesia is a subregion of Oceania, made up of more than 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are called Polynesians. They have many things in common, including language relatedness, cultural practices, and traditional beliefs. In centuries past, they had a strong shared tradition of sailing and using stars to navigate at night.
Dema Deity is a concept introduced by Adolf Ellegard Jensen following his research on religious sacrifice. Jensen was a German ethnologist who furthered the theory of Cultural Morphology founded by Leo Frobenius.
The 2017 FIBA Women's Melanesian Basketball Cup was an international basketball tournament contested by nations of the newly formed Melanesia FIBA Oceania sub-zone. The inaugural edition of the women's tournament were held together alongside the Men's tournament in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea from 27 to 30 September 2017. Matches were played at the Taurama Aquatic and Indoor Centre. It was officially launched on 19 May 2017.
Andrew Jamieson Strathern is a British anthropologist.
References
- ↑ James Whitley ("Social Diversity in Dark Age Greece", The Annual of the British School at Athens86 (1991:341-365) applied Sahlins' ethnographic model to instability in settlement patterns during the Greek Dark Age, 10th-8th centuries BCE.
- ↑ Marshall Sahlins (April 1963). "Poor Man, Rich Man, Big Man, Chief; Political Types in Melanesia and Polynesia" (PDF). Comparative Studies in Society and History. 5 (3): 285–303. doi:10.1017/S0010417500001729. S2CID 145254059. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2 October 2013.
- ↑ Strathern, Andrew (2007). The rope of Moka: big-men and ceremonial exchange in Mount Hagen, New Guinea. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521099578. OCLC 698948824.
- ↑ Waiko, John D. (1993). A Short History of Papua New Guinea, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-553164-7, p.9