Please note: In order to keep Hive up to date and provide users with the best features, we are no longer able to fully support Internet Explorer. The site is still available to you, however some sections of the site may appear broken. We would encourage you to move to a more modern browser like Firefox, Edge or Chrome in order to experience the site fully.

Possessing Polynesians : The Science of Settler Colonial Whiteness in Hawai`i and Oceania, Paperback / softback Book

Possessing Polynesians : The Science of Settler Colonial Whiteness in Hawai`i and Oceania Paperback / softback

Paperback / softback

Description

From their earliest encounters with Indigenous Pacific Islanders, white Europeans and Americans asserted an identification with the racial origins of Polynesians, declaring them to be racially almost white and speculating that they were of Mediterranean or Aryan descent.

In Possessing Polynesians Maile Arvin analyzes this racializing history within the context of settler colonialism across Polynesia, especially in Hawai‘i.

Arvin argues that a logic of possession through whiteness animates settler colonialism, by which both Polynesia (the place) and Polynesians (the people) become exotic, feminized belongings of whiteness.

Seeing whiteness as indigenous to Polynesia provided white settlers with the justification needed to claim Polynesian lands and resources.

Understood as possessions, Polynesians were and continue to be denied the privileges of whiteness.

Yet Polynesians have long contested these classifications, claims, and cultural representations, and Arvin shows how their resistance to and refusal of white settler logic have regenerated Indigenous forms of recognition.

Information

Other Formats

Save 15%

£24.99

£21.05

 
Free Home Delivery

on all orders

 
Pick up orders

from local bookshops

Information