Abstract
In the Hawaiian Kingdom of the nineteenth century, Mōʻī David Kalākaua employed social and cultural policies and “spectacles of display” to sustain the sovereignty of the lāhui. At first glance, these policies suggest that Hawaiian social and cultural practices easily cohere with Western leisure theoretical concepts. Drawing on Jonathan Z. Smith’s comparative approach, we present strategies for maieutic listening to Kanaka ʻŌiwi scholarship and voices and a rectification of leisure theory while maintaining an ambiguity around the commonality between Kanaka ʻŌiwi social and cultural practices and Western leisure theory.
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Notes
- 1.
We use various terms (Kanaka Maoli, Kanaka ʻŌiwi, ʻŌiwi) interchangeably for the preferred ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi or ʻōlelo [Hawaiian language] terms for the Indigenous people of Hawaiʻi as reflected in current popular and academic publications. We also use ʻōlelo when an English translation is inadequate for the complexity of the ʻōlelo. See “Comparative Method: A Word About Translation”.
- 2.
We follow a number of language conventions….when there are no adequate translations we provide a short discussion and use the ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi term to indicate the more ambiguous and complete implications of the words. We do not italicize ʻolelo terms to highlight the need to work within a multi-lingual world.
- 3.
We use traditional following Beamer’s (2008) discussion of the phrase “mai ā kūpuna mai” [from the ancestors] from the Pukui and Elbert dictionary. Beamer interprets the phrase literally as what comes from the ancestors into this time. Conceptually, the phrase indicates that as generations pass, more knowledge can be passed down from generation to generation, not as an antithesis to modern.
- 4.
The scholarly debate about these estimates continues given the problematic nature of many sources (Brown 2011).
- 5.
The Hawaiian term for foreigner is haole (one who cannot speak ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi). Current usage can range from foreigner to Americans who immigrated or were born in Hawaiʻi to highly derogative. Although the Hawaiian Kingdom was never technically a colony and illegally occupied and annexed, settler seems a better term given the colonial intentions of the American missionaries and merchants, not to mention the US government.
- 6.
Due to lack of space, translations are accessible in the cited sources.
- 7.
The Great Māhele, or land division, of 1848–1855 redistributed Hawaiian land: 1/3 became crown lands, 1/3 was allocated to chiefs, and the remaining 1/3 was supposed to go to makaʻainana. Yet, as Merry (2000) notes, few commoners in reality obtained land in their own names. Rather large tracts of it passed into the hands of naturalized foreigners and after 1850, non-naturalized ones. Merry (2000) argues the Māhele was highly significant as it transformed the Hawaiian Kingdom from a society based on a hierarchy of tenant-lord relations to one based on individual private land ownership.
- 8.
Lyon’s (2011) recent translations supports a move away from word-for-word translations toward “uniquely Hawaiian duality” (p. 94) conceptual relationships of pono and hewa within contexts of original manuscripts such as Malo’s M’olelo Hawaiʻi.
- 9.
The scholarship about hula is extensive and beyond the scope of this paper and the expertise of the authors. Our purpose is to demonstrate how hula was positioned for comparative purposes only.
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Fox, K.M., McDermott, L. (2017). Listening to Nineteenth-Century Kanaka ‘Ōiwi Voices; Re-imagining the Possibilities for Leisure. In: Spracklen, K., Lashua, B., Sharpe, E., Swain, S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Leisure Theory. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56479-5_4
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