Traditional Feasts and Glocalized Festivals in the Marquesas
This chapter begins with a brief survey of ethnohistorical sources regarding the production, distribution, preparation, and consumption of food in the Marquesas from the time of sustained European contact in the late 18th century and on through several waves of globalizing entanglements (exploration, trade, colonization, missionization, education, tourism, and international media). It shows how local reactions to these global forces have produced a range of syncretic foodways – both everyday and ritualized – that deserve analysis not only for their intrinsic interest concerning these specific people, but also for the contribution this analysis makes to theoretical debates over how communities use the semiotically rich and sensitive substance of food to forge and perform hybrid identities. The analysis focuses first on how these « traditional » foodways have been maintained and reinvented, and secondly on how they are deployed in a range of glocalized feasts and festivals – from the domestic to the international – especially those associated with the cultural revival movement in the Marquesas, now almost 35 years in the making.