Dissertation Research: The Ancient Hawaiian World-System Through the Eyes of Russian Explorers

9634211 Dunn本论文改进研究涉及科学观察者的特权地位，当研究人员全神贯注于使用汇总数据时，这在很大程度上是不被认可的。这个项目的独特之处在于，通过探索者的眼睛，研究一个小世界体系融入一个不断扩大的大世界体系的时刻。古代夏威夷群岛的小世界体系在19世纪早期被转变并纳入现代世界体系之前将被考察。这将通过研究不同类型数据的相对有效性来完成，并使用这些数据来推断夏威夷世界体系中不同政治的结构位置。被检验的一般假设是，人们对19世纪初夏威夷社会复杂性的“了解”并不仅仅来自对事实的观察，探险家们的看法也受到社会和历史环境的影响。这项研究的数据主要来自俄罗斯航海家的记录。通过检查特定个体对事件的表征，世界体系方法的几个论点，例如，关于更多和更少等级邻居之间的相互作用将得到检验。这项研究似乎表明，有必要从对总交换分布的广泛研究转向对基于上下文的交换行为知识的更敏感的研究。＊＊＊

9634211 Dunn This Dissertation Improvement research deals with the privileged status of the scientific observer, which for the most part goes unrecognized when the researcher is preoccupied with using aggregate data. The uniqueness of the project is to study one small world-system at the moment of it's incorporation into an expanding larger one through the eyes of explorers. The small world-system of the ancient Hawaiian archipelago before that system was transformed and incorporated in to the modern world-system in the early nineteenth century will be examined. This will be accomplished through studying the relative validity of different kinds of data and using these data to make inferences about structural positions of different polities within the Hawaiian world-system. The general hypothesis being tested is that what is "known" about the social complexity of Hawaii at the turn of 19th century did not arise from observation of facts alone, but the perceptions of the explorers were shaped by social and historical circumstances. The data for this research is mainly from accounts of Russian voyagers. Through examining particular individuals' representations of events several theses of the world-system approach, e.g. concerning the interplay between more and less hierarchical neighbors will be tested. The study seemingly suggests a need to move away from broad studies of total exchange distribution to more sensitive studies of contextual based knowledge about the exchange acts. ***