Dancing from the Heart: Movement, Gender, and Cook Islands Globalization - Couverture rigide

Alexeyeff, Kalissa

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0824832442 ISBN 13 : 9780824832445

Editeur : University of Hawai'i Press, 2009

Synopsis

Dancing from the Heart is the first study of gender, globalization, and expressive culture in the Cook Islands. It demonstrates how dance in particular plays a key role in articulating the overlapping local, regional, and transnational agendas of Cook Islanders. Kalissa Alexeyeff reconfigures conventional views of globalization's impact on indigenous communities, moving beyond diagnoses of cultural erosion and contamination to a grounded exploration of creative agency and vital cultural production. Central to the study is a rich and textured ethnographic account of contemporary Cook Islands dance practice. Based on fieldwork, in-depth interviews, and archival research, it offers an engrossing analysis of how Cook Islands social life is generated through expressive practices. Dance is explored in a variety of settings, including beauty pageants, tourist venues, nightclubs and community celebrations at home and within Cook Islands communities abroad.
Contemporary Cook Islands dance practices are also shaped by competing ideas about the past. Debates about precolonial traditions, missionization, and colonialism pervade discussions about dance and expressive culture. Alexeyeff shows how the politics of tradition reflect the competing moral, political, personal, and economic practices of postcolonial Cook Islanders. Throughout the work the stories and voices of individuals are brought to the fore. Their views are juxtaposed with scholarship on tradition, modernity, and social dynamics.
Engaging and accessible, Dancing from the Heart illuminates specific and intimate aspects of Cook Islands social life while, at the same time, addressing fundamental questions within anthropology and indigenous, performance, and postcolonial studies.

A propos du livre

À propos de l?auteur

Kalissa Alexeyeff is a McArthur Fellow in the Gender Studies Program at the University of Melbourne.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: University of Hawai'i Press
• Date d'édition: 2009
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0824832442
• ISBN 13: 9780824832445
• Reliure: Relié
• Numéro d'édition: 1
• Nombre de pages: 240
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible