How "Natives" Think About Captain Cook, For Example

Bibliographic Data

ID2835388
AuthorsJoseph F Patrouch (Florida International University, corresponding author)
Year1996
Volume76
Issue4
Pages763
Publication date1996-11-01
Open AccessNo
TypeREVIEW
Review ofHow "Natives" Think: About Captain Cook, For Example, Marshall Sahlins, 1995
VenueHispanic American Historical Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0018-2168 • E-ISSN: 1527-1900
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2517959
OpenAlexW4235208686, W2158766809
LanguageEN

When Western scholars write about non-Western societies, do they inevitably perpetuate the myths of European imperialism? Can they ever articulate the meanings and logics of non-Western peoples? Who has the right to speak for whom? Questions such as these are debated in this text. Marshall Sahlins addresses these issues head on, while building a case for the ability of anthropologists working in the Western tradition to understand other cultures. In recent years, these questions have arisen in debates over the death and deification of Captain James Cook on Hawaii Island in 1779. Did the Hawaiians truly receive Cook as a manifestation of their own god Lono? Or were they too pragmatic, too worldly-wise to accept the foreigner as a god? Moreover, can a non-native scholar give voice to a native point of view? This volume seeks to go far beyond specialized debates about the alleged superiority of Western traditions. The culmination of Sahlins's ethnohistorical research on Hawaii, is a reaffirmation for understanding difference

Culmination · Mythology · Sociology · Anthropology · Asian American and Pacific Histories · Classics · Geographic Information Systems Studies · History · Island Studies and Pacific Affairs · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies · Rhetoric and Communication Studies

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