"The book is blessed with an intrinsically interesting subject matter: the way in which the religious basis of societies all across Polynesia was suddenly torn up and deliberately rejected within a decade or two. The author succeeds in highlighting how extraordinary and dramatic the 'Polynesian Iconoclasm' was, drawing our attention to it as a coherent phenomenon, and penetrating these convulsions more deeply than other scholars have managed hitherto." · Alan Strathern, University of Oxford
"The book is an ethnographic tour de force describing in great detail the conversion to Christianity in a number of Polynesian societies. The ethnographic argument is solid and the book would be excellent addition to the interpretations of religious conversion, cultural change and Polynesian ethnography in general." · Jukka Siikala, University of Helsinki
Within little more than ten years in the early nineteenth century, inhabitants of Tahiti, Hawaii and fifteen other closely related societies destroyed or desecrated all of their temples and most of their god-images. In the aftermath of the explosive event, which Sissons terms the Polynesian Iconoclasm, hundreds of architecturally innovative churches - one the size of two football fields - were constructed. At the same time, Christian leaders introduced oppressive laws and courts, which the youth resisted through seasonal displays of revelry and tattooing. Seeking an answer to why this event occurred in the way that it did, this book introduces and demonstrates an alternative "practice history" that draws on the work of Marshall Sahlins and employs Bourdieu's concepts of habitus, improvisation and practical logic.