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Tall tales of tradition : Solomon Island Kastom stories in transition

Historical conditions of colonialism, and more recently, the emergence of a post-colonial state and urbanization, have brought about rapid socio-cultural change in the Solomon Islands, characterized by heterogeneity and the influx of new cultural products. Throughout this process, notions of tradition have emerged, iterated largely through the multivocal category of kastom which is fundamentally construed in opposition to notions of Christianity and modernization. This thesis examines how these changes have affected stories, specifically a group of narratives called "kastom stories," told by students in the urban setting, and how these narratives have become a space for tradition to be stated and created. Notions of genre are explored to discover how such an amalgam of stories as that of the kastom stories regarded here could be considered as a group. I examine story structures to understand how elements from diverse sources could become integrated to the stories, and look at transformations which, in distanciating the stories from their original socio-cultural context of production, serve to recontextualize them in their present socio-cultural setting.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.24105
Date January 1996
CreatorsSeller, Robbyn.
ContributorsGalaty, J. (advisor), Jourdan, D. (advisor)
PublisherMcGill University
Source SetsLibrary and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation
Formatapplication/pdf
CoverageMaster of Arts (Department of Anthropology.)
RightsAll items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated.
Relationalephsysno: 001541777, proquestno: MM19918, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest.

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