Mimesis and Pacific Transcultural Encounters

Jeannette Mageo is a psychological anthropologist. Her work focuses on how subjectivity, identity, and emotion evolve out of cultural and historical experiences. Since 1980, she has been involved in research and publication on Samoan culture, history, and psychology.

“Anthropologists, as scholars and teachers, should welcome these analyses, as mimesis is at the core of our foundational ethnographic method, participant observation, and also is a popular strategy of hands-on, experiential learning within classrooms. As Bell concludes, ‘mimesis is profoundly engaging anthropologically because of issues it raises about the nature of cross-culture engagement’. Anthropologist see, anthropologist do.” • JRAI (Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute)“…a rich and nuanced thesaurus of instances of mimesis. Common themes are developed across the chapters, skilfully knit together in the Afterword penned by Bell…The impressive internal coherence of the volume and the questions it generates encourage an engagement with this publication beyond its regional specificity.” • Anthropos“This edited collection offers an important contribution to mimesis and its role in transcultural encounters, both in the past and present, in the Pacific region.” • Alison Dundon, University of Adelaide, Australia

• List of FiguresAcknowledgmentsPART I: INTRODUCTIONIntroduction: Mimesis in Theory and in Cultural HistoryJeanette MageoPART II: MIMESIS THROUGH TIMEChapter 1. 
Imitation as Relationality in Early Australian EncountersFrancesca MerlanChapter 2. Transitional Images and Imaginaries: Dressing in Schemas in Colonial SamoaJeannette Mageo
Chapter 3. 
Reel to Real: Mimesis, Playing Indian, and Touring with The Vanishing Race 
in New Zealand 1927Sarina PearsonPART III: SELLING MIMESIS: FROM TOURIST ART TO TRADE STORESChapter 4. Traditional Tahitian Weddings for Tourists: An Entwinement of Mimetic PracticesJoyce D. HammondChapter 5. 
Of Dragons and Mermaids: The Art of Mimesis in the Trobriand IslandsSergio Jarillo de la TorreChapter 6. 
Capitalism Meets Its Match: Failed Mimesis of Market Economics among the Asabano 
of Papua New GuineaRoger Ivar LohmannPART IV: RITUAL MIMESIS AND ITS RECONFIGURATIONSChapter 7. Mimesis, Ethnopsychology, and Transculturation:
Identifications in Birthday Celebrations among Banabans in FijiElfriede HermannChapter 8. Mimesis and Reimagining Identity among Marshall IslandersLaurence Marshall Carucci
Chapter 9. 
Anthropology, Christianity, and the Colonial Impasse: Rawa Mimesis, Millennialism, and Modernity in the Finisterre Mountains of Papua New GuineaDoug DaltonPART V: AFTERWORD“1 Lot Magic Sticks 6 Bundles”: Mimetic Technologies, Their Intimacies and Intersecting HistoriesJoshua A. Bell
Index