Colonizing Hawai'i
The Cultural Power of Law
1st Edition
Published on 8. December 2020
432 pages
978-0-691-22198-4 (ISBN)
Description
How does law transform family, sexuality, and community in the fractured social world characteristic of the colonizing process? The law was a cornerstone of the so-called civilizing process of nineteenth-century colonialism. It was simultaneously a means of transformation and a marker of the seductive idea of civilization. Sally Engle Merry reveals how, in Hawai'i, indigenous Hawaiian law was displaced by a transplanted Anglo-American law as global movements of capitalism, Christianity, and imperialism swept across the islands. The new law brought novel systems of courts, prisons, and conceptions of discipline and dramatically changed the marriage patterns, work lives, and sexual conduct of the indigenous people of Hawai'i.
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Person
Sally Engle Merry is Class of 1949 Professor of Ethics in the Anthropology Department at Wellesley College. Her books include Urban Danger: Life in a Neighborhood of Strangers, Getting Justice and Getting Even: Legal Consciousness among Working-Class Americans, and The Possibility of Popular Justice: A Case Study of American Community Mediation, coedited with Neal Milner. She is currently president of the Association for Political and Legal Anthropology.
Content
- Intro
- Cover Page
- Half-title Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication Page
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- A Note on Language and Terminology
- One: Introduction
- Part one: Encounters In A Contact Zone: New Englandmissionaries, Lawyers, and The Appropriation of Anglo-American Law, 1820-1852
- Two: The Process of Legal Transformation
- Three: The First Transition: Religious Law
- Four: The Second Transition: Secular Law
- Part Two: Local Practices of Policing and Judging In Hilo, Hawai'i
- Five: The Social History of a Plantation town
- Six: Judges and Caseloads in Hilo
- Seven: Protest and the Law on the Hilo Sugar Plantations
- Eight: Sexuality, Marriage, and the Management of the Body
- Nine: Conclusions
- Appendixes
- A: Cases From Hilo District Court
- B: Accompanying Tables
- Notes
- References
- Index
