“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

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.

List of Figures
Acknowledgments

PART I: INTRODUCTION

Introduction: Mimesis in Theory and in Cultural History
Jeanette Mageo

PART II: MIMESIS THROUGH TIME

Chapter 1. 
Imitation as Relationality in Early Australian Encounters
Francesca Merlan

Chapter 2. Transitional Images and Imaginaries: Dressing in Schemas in Colonial Samoa
Jeannette Mageo


Chapter 3. 
Reel to Real: Mimesis, Playing Indian, and Touring with The Vanishing Race 
in New Zealand 1927
Sarina Pearson

PART III: SELLING MIMESIS: FROM TOURIST ART TO TRADE STORES

Chapter 4. Traditional Tahitian Weddings for Tourists: An Entwinement of Mimetic Practices
Joyce D. Hammond

Chapter 5. 
Of Dragons and Mermaids: The Art of Mimesis in the Trobriand Islands
Sergio Jarillo de la Torre

Chapter 6. 
Capitalism Meets Its Match: Failed Mimesis of Market Economics among the Asabano 
of Papua New Guinea
Roger Ivar Lohmann

PART IV: RITUAL MIMESIS AND ITS RECONFIGURATIONS

Chapter 7. Mimesis, Ethnopsychology, and Transculturation:
Identifications in Birthday Celebrations among Banabans in Fiji
Elfriede Hermann

Chapter 8. Mimesis and Reimagining Identity among Marshall Islanders
Laurence Marshall Carucci


Chapter 9. 
Anthropology, Christianity, and the Colonial Impasse: Rawa Mimesis, Millennialism, and Modernity in the Finisterre Mountains of Papua New Guinea
Doug Dalton

PART V: AFTERWORD

“1 Lot Magic Sticks 6 Bundles”: Mimetic Technologies, Their Intimacies and Intersecting Histories
Joshua A. Bell


Index