Tahiti Beyond the Postcard: Power, Place, and Everyday Life

by Miriam Kahn

Winner of the 2013 ICAS Book Prize (Social Sciences)

The "Tahiti" that most people imagine - white-sand beaches, turquoise lagoons, and beautiful women - is a product of 18th century European romanticism and persists today as the bedrock of Tahiti's tourism industry. This postcard image, however, masks a different reality. The dreams and desires that the tourism industry promotes distract from the medical nightmares and environmental destruction caused by France's 30-year nuclear testing program in French Polynesia. Tahitians see the burying of a bomb in their land as deeply offensive. For Tahitians, the land abounds with ancestral fertility, and genealogical identity, and is a source of physical and spiritual nourishment. These imagined and lived perspectives seem incompatible, yet are intricately intertwined in the political economy.

Tahiti Beyond the Postcard engages with questions about the subtle but ubiquitous ways in which power entangles itself in place-related ways. Miriam Kahn uses interpretive frameworks of both Tahitian and European scholars, drawing upon ethnographic details that include ancient chants, picture postcards, antinuclear protests, popular song lyrics, and the legacy of Paul Gauguin's art, to provide fresh perspectives on colonialism, tourism, imagery, and the anthropology of place.

Genres: Anthropology

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 13, 2011

Reviews

[kira]

great read. so glad chris suggested it to me (though he said the wrong author & place names so it wasn't that easy to find). glad i did

[Ted Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

What do nuclear bombs and tourism have to do with each other? For Miriam Kahn, an anthropologist at the University of Washington, these two seemingly opposite ideas feed off of each other in the tropical, often mythologized, Tahiti. Everyone in America has probably at one point in their life heard about this island (and wanted to visit in some way) but know very little of its history of current events. Before reading this ethnography, I had no idea that Tahiti is still officially a colony under the French government, that France had tested nuclear bombs there as recently as 1996, or that the international airport that brings in thousands of tourists a year was originally built to bring military staff for nuclear testing. Tahiti, Kahn shows through stories of natives and officials, is a place of many contradictions. Tahiti is an island where cancer rates skyrocketed during nuclear testing but is considered an untouched, natural paradise -- even if every white, sandy beach is artificially constructed because they don't exist naturally in Tahiti. It's an island where nude and nubile islander women are placed on famous postcards -- even if said islander woman is actually a model from Paris, France.

While intended for an academic audience, Kahn writes in a mostly simple writing style, even when discussing some particularly complex cultural theories. Each chapter focuses on various aspects of Tahiti -- politics, tourism, nuclear testing -- and dissects the various institutions that exert power and compete fiercely with each other over how French citizens, Tahitian natives, and the rest of the world via the tourism industry view this tiny island in the middle of the vast Pacific Ocean. Along the way, you'll meet politely resistant tribal chiefs, a lustful European seafaring captain, a man branded as a terrorist by the French government, a postcard company owner, and various Tahitian families who struggle to make a living, all creating together the colorful -- and sometimes tragic -- place we call Tahiti.

[stephe · Rating 4 out of 5]

read Tahiti Beyond the Postcard for my introductory course ANTH 100 and it made me pursue Anthropology.