Bibliograph

Colonizing Hawai'i, the cultural power of law, Sally Engle Merry

Type

Label

Colonizing Hawai'i, the cultural power of law, Sally Engle Merry

Language

eng

Index

no index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

Colonizing Hawai'i

Medium

electronic resource

Nature of contents

dictionaries

Responsibility statement

Sally Engle Merry

Series statement

Princeton studies in culture/power/history

Sub title

the cultural power of law

Summary

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

Target audience

adult

Classification