Cocktails In Tahiti

Over 50 sumptuous cocktail recipes blend exotic fruits, juices, and liquors providing a flavorful and vibrant palette from which to capture the fun and often elegant mood of these captivating islands. You'll learn the history of the legendary Mai Tai, Tahiti's most famous cocktail, and discover the secrets of the intriguing rums, vodkas, and distinctive liqueurs used in creating Tahiti's most celebrated libations.

A special section features the signature cocktail recipes from Tahiti's most outstanding luxury resorts along with spectacular photographs and overviews of these renowned hotels.

Whether served from a coconut or elegantly chilled in a martini glass of fine crystal, the flowering and colorful cocktails of Tahiti have an undeniable presence all their own. If you are dreaming of a future trip or reliving special memories from a past visit to these beautiful islands, this wonderful collection of delightful drink recipes, dazzling hotel photographs, and distinctive insights will put you in a tropical, tranquil mood as you sip your way to our magical paradise.

Al Keahi, Managing Director, Tahiti Tourism Bureau N.A:
A must have book of fun and facts for anyone who has visited or dreams of visiting Tahiti.

New Book Resources, October 2006:
We can't wait to try out the recipes and imagine that we are at one of the featured, dreamlike hotels.

Vincent Guerin, Director of Sales, Starwood Hotels & Resorts French Polynesia:
The finest collection of resort photographs and cocktail recipes from across Tahiti.

Here Gananath Obeyesekere debunks one of the most enduring myths of imperialism, civilization, and conquest: the notion that the Western civilizer is a god to savages. Using shipboard journals and logs kept by Captain James Cook and his officers, Obeyesekere reveals the captain as both the self-conscious civilizer and as the person who, his mission gone awry, becomes a "savage" himself.

In this new edition of The Apotheosis of Captain Cook, the author addresses, in a lengthy afterword, Marshall Sahlins's 1994 book, How "Natives" Think, which was a direct response to this work.

Also of interest was the repeated theme of cultural imperialism, explaining how modern historians project their own cultural predjudices (in this case, the simple savage, and a view of religion that is decidedly rational and rooted in monotheism) onto foreign cultures, and the misunderstandings that naturally arise. There's a number of similar cases I can think of, where the common knowledge is so influenced - best example is the view that Cortez conquered Mexico as an unimpeded God, when a simple reading of Bernal Diaz shows that's not the case.

I do have to complain, though, that a overly large portion of the book is given to the academic refutation of fellow scholar Mr. Sahlins. The author is challenging common thought, and I appreciate being able to read the debate with a prestigious scholar who represents the status quo. However, I thought it should have been made more distinct from the rest of the book - much interesting information is revealed in the argument, but it's comparatively dry reading.

Still, overall, this book makes for a very interesting read, and encourages one to re-examine their historical and cultural assumptions. I definitely think it's worth reading.

Cook was not the great god Lono, nor did he pretend to be. While his second arrival at the Sandwich Islands did coincide with the Makahiki festival, the Hawaiians did not deify him, but rather invited the Captain and his crew to take part in the ritual. Unfortunately for the Captain things seem to devolve afterward, and the Hawaiians killed him and several members of his crew.

Many have tried to piece together the tattered remnants of this story. Several of his crew kept journals and attempts were made after the fact to collect oral history from Hawaiians who were part of the cannibalistic ritual. Unfortunately, few of these accounts jive. Marshall Sahlins has done the most to try to piece together the events, but he seems to discount the Hawaiians ability for cognitive thinking, which tarnishes his work.

Obeyesekere attempted to draw Sahlins out, which he did with this book. Sahlins responded with the more scholarly but overbearing "How Natives Think," which he hoped would settle the issue once and for all. Unfortunately, Obeyeskere is not an anthropologist and his arguments tend to be a bit thin, but he does shoot plenty of holes into Sahlins' thesis.

Average customer rating:

methinks he dost protest too much
Great Story About Responsibility
Not the right thing
Sloping shoulders
A tragic story told with feeling

The Right Thing
Scott Waddle
Manufacturer: Thomas Nelson
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Naval | Military | History | Subjects | Books

General | World | History | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 1591450365

When Western scholars write about non-Western societies, do they inevitably perpetuate the myths of European imperialism? Can they ever articulate the meanings and logics of non-Western peoples? Who has the right to speak for whom? Questions such as these are among the most hotly debated in contemporary intellectual life. In How "Natives" Think, Marshall Sahlins addresses these issues head on, while building a powerful case for the ability of anthropologists working in the Western tradition to understand other cultures.

In recent years, these questions have arisen in debates over the death and deification of Captain James Cook on Hawai'i Island in 1779. Did the Hawaiians truly receive Cook as a manifestation of their own god Lono? Or were they too pragmatic, too worldly-wise to accept the foreigner as a god? Moreover, can a "non-native" scholar give voice to a "native" point of view? In his 1992 book The Apotheosis of Captain Cook, Gananath Obeyesekere used this very issue to attack Sahlins's decades of scholarship on Hawaii. Accusing Sahlins of elementary mistakes of fact and logic, even of intentional distortion, Obeyesekere portrayed Sahlins as accepting a naive, enthnocentric idea of superiority of the white man over "natives"—Hawaiian and otherwise. Claiming that his own Sri Lankan heritage gave him privileged access to the Polynesian native perspective, Obeyesekere contended that Hawaiians were actually pragmatists too rational and sensible to mistake Cook for a god.

Curiously then, as Sahlins shows, Obeyesekere turns eighteenth-century Hawaiians into twentieth-century modern Europeans, living up to the highest Western standards of "practical rationality." By contrast, Western scholars are turned into classic custom-bound "natives", endlessly repeating their ancestral traditions of the White man's superiority by insisting Cook was taken for a god. But this inverted ethnocentrism can only be supported, as Sahlins demonstrates, through wholesale fabrications of Hawaiian ethnography and history—not to mention Obeyesekere's sustained misrepresentations of Sahlins's own work. And in the end, although he claims to be speaking on behalf of the "natives," Obeyesekere, by substituting a home-made "rationality" for Hawaiian culture, systematically eliminates the voices of Hawaiian people from their own history.

How "Natives" Think goes far beyond specialized debates about the alleged superiority of Western traditions. The culmination of Sahlins's ethnohistorical research on Hawaii, it is a reaffirmation for understanding difference.