Empowering the Past?

Abstract

Constructions of the past have emerged as a crucial theme in the study of change in Pacific societies. As we have seen, the past is construed and reconstrued in accordance with people’s shifting interests and concerns. People empower their past when they want to invoke it as a means of legitimizing or achieving their current aspirations. In this case the past becomes a resource for them to tap into and in so doing they reshape it. Different periods of the past may come into play in this way at different times, or the same periods may be given very different evaluations. In the opposite scenario, people reject their past, or a portion of it, in order to praise or reinforce their ties with powerful forces in their contemporary world. In these contexts the past is seen as bad and the narrative invoked is one of rupture with the past and of progress away from it, often seen as “modernization.” When disillusionment sets in, people may shift again into the other modality, in which the past is again empowered as an inspiration or model for the future. Neither schema need unequivocally hold. In practice both may be employed at the same time in relation to different domains of life. The people may see some aspects of the past as good and others as more questionable or to be rejected. A particular area, because of its history, may be more inclined to one view than the other.