Unaisi Nabobo-Baba observed that for the various peoples of the Pacific, kinship is generally understood as "knowledge that counts." It is with this observation that this volume begins, and it continues with a straightforward objective to provide case studies of Pacific kinship. In doing so, contributors share an understanding of kinship as a lived and living dimension of contemporary human lives, in an area where deep historical links provide for close and useful comparison. The ethnographic focus is on transformation and continuity over time in Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa with the addition of three instructive cases from Tokelau, Papua New Guinea, and Taiwan. The book ends with an account of how kinship is constituted in day-to-day ritual and ritualized behavior.

Christina Toren is Professor of Anthropology and founding Director of the Centre for Pacific Studies at the University of St Andrews. Her works include Mind, Materiality and History (1999) and The Challenge of Epistemology (co-edited with João de Pina-Cabral, 2012).

List of Illustrations

Introduction: Kinship in the Pacific as Knowledge that Counts
Christina Toren and Simonne Pauwels

Chapter 1. The Mutual Implication of Kinship and Chiefship in Fiji
Unaisi Nabobo-Baba

Chapter 2. Pigs for Money: Kinship and the Monetisation of Exchange among the Truku
Ching-Hsiu Lin

Chapter 3. Fijian Kinship: Exchange and Migration
Jara Hulkenberg

Chapter 4. Gendered Sides and Ritual Moieties: Tokelau Kinship as Social Practice
Ingjerd Hoëm

Chapter 5. Tongan Kinship Terminology and Social Stratification
Svenja Völkel

Chapter 6. 'I suffered when my sister gave birth.' Transformations of the Brother-Sister Bond Among the Ankave-Anga of Papua New Guinea
Pascale Bonnemère

Chapter 7. The Vasu Position and the Sister's Mana. The Case of Lau (Fiji)
Simonne Pauwels

Chapter 8. Sister or Wife? You've Got to Choose. A Solution to the Puzzle of Village Exogamy in Samoa
Serge Tcherkézoff

Chapter 9. The Sister's Return. The Brother-Sister Relationship, the Tongan Fahu and the Unfolding of Kinship in Polynesia
Françoise Douaire-Marsaudon

Chapter 10. How Would We Have Got Here if our Paternal Grandmother Had Not Existed? Relations of Locality, Blood, Life and Name in Nasau (Fiji)
Françoise Cayrol

Chapter 11. How ritual articulates kinship
Christina Toren

Notes on Contributors