Possessing Polynesians: The Science of Settler Colonial

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

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 Hawaiâ€˜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.
Country USA
Brand Duke University Press
Manufacturer Duke University Press
Binding Paperback
PartNumber 19 illustrations
Height 8.8
Length 6
Weight 1.00089866948
Width 0.8
ReleaseDate 2019-11-08
NumberOfItems 1

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