Literacy, Emotion, and Authority: Reading and Writing on a Polynesian Atoll

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Literacy, Emotion, and Authority: Reading and Writing on a Polynesian Atoll. NIKO BESNER. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, 234 pp. Literacy is one of important topics in which anthropologists have debated the extent to which and in what ways modes of thought have a common crosscultural core. The contrast between literacy and preliteracy has been proposed as a means of demonstating qualitative differences in cognitive processes that are associated with the west and the rest of the world in a more or less deterministic fashion. The causal role of literacy and the serious problems associated with constituting the categories defining literate and pre-literate societies have recently been under critical scrutiny by scholars in a variety of fields, including social anthropology. Central to this criticism is the idea that literacy is not a monolithic phenomenon which can be studied independently of the particular social, political, and historical forces of which it is a part Niko Besnier's Literacy, emotion, and authority commences with a useful introduction to the development of these discussions in modern anthropology. He positions himself clearly within the critical perspective (ideological model, as it has been called) that gives priority to understanding literacy in its ethnographic context, yet would go further to propose theoretical perspectives that can incorporate generalized and comparative understandings of literacy and its sociocultural context. Thus, Besnier's ethnographic analysis of reading and writing on a Polynesian atoll transcends a preoccupation with the particularities of the ethnographic context and, in so doing, suggests ways in which literacy and context interface cross-culturally. While his objectives are theoretical, Besnier couches theory within his ethnography of literacy practices on the Nukulaelae atoll in the SouthCentral Pacific, part of the island groups and nation of Tuvalu. In contact history of the island, particularly in the last half of the nineteenth century, he documents the introduction of literacy practices on Nukulaelae. Missionaries, slavers, and colonizers made their impact on the local community and in various ways were influential in creating contacts between Nukulaelae Islanders and other communities throughout the Pacific. Today, the approximately 350 inhabitants of the atoll are eager travellers and are part of kin and friendship networks that spread far beyond the atoll. Distance and mobility are an important aspect of writing and reading on Nukulaelae. Letter-writing is one of the most common forms of literacy practices on the island today; it is influenced by literacy practices historically inherited from the outside. From as early as the end of the nineteenth century, letter-writing has played a crucial role in keeping kinship networks alive and is one of the two everyday forms of literacy which Besnier analyzes in depth in the book. While literacy was introduced for the sole purpose of reading the Bible, islanders were adept at redefining literacy skills to suit their communicative needs for maintaining contact with people in residence away from the atoll. Thus, literacy technology was empowered with a distinct meaning shortly after its introduction, and islanders were not passive recipients of the new technology. On the basis of a collection of 327 letters addressed to both resident and non-resident islanders, young and old, men and women, Besnier is able to provide a highly convincing analysis of contemporary letter-writing. One of the central motives for writing a letter is to monitor and control economic activity. In this connection, insight into the economic circulation of goods and the dynamics of reciprocal obligations that generate such exchange is provided as background to a variety of letter excerpts, but the particularities of the economic context relating to individual letter are restrained. The general treatment of context in the discussion of other motivations for writing letters, such as narrating events, gossip, and moral admonition, highlights the wide scope of the textual material without jeopardizing the thrust inherent in using such materials. …