"Supreme among our Valuables": Whale Teeth Tabua, Chieftainship and Power in Eastern Fiji

Authors

  • Steven Hooper Sainsbury Research Unit, University of East Anglia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15286/jps.122.2.103-160

Abstract

This article draws on recent ethnographic research and on records and observations from the early 19th century onwards to demonstrate the great importance of transactable tabua "modified whale teeth" in Fijian cultural life. It argues for a distinction between these post-contact transactable tabua and heirloom tabua of greater antiquity, but suggests that the role of the latter as embodiments of pre-Christian gods partly accounts for the high value still accorded to transactable tabua and their close association with chiefs.

Author Biography

Steven Hooper, Sainsbury Research Unit, University of East Anglia

Steven Hooper is Director of the Sainsbury Research Unit for the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas at the University of East Anglia, UK. He completed his Ph.D. in 1982 at the Department of Social Anthropology, Cambridge University, after conducting over two years of fieldwork in Lau, eastern Fiji. During 2003-2006 he ran a research project on Polynesian art, culminating in the exhibition and publication Pacific Encounters: Art and Divinity in Polynesia 1760-1860 (2006). He is currently (2011-14) principal investigator on a project focusing on Fijian art (www.fijianart.sru.uea.ac.uk), which involves several exhibitions and publications.

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Published

2013-10-08

Issue

Vol. 122 No. 2 (2013)

Section

Articles

License

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