Cultural Authentication Refined: The Case of the Hawaiian Holokuū

Abstract

In this paper, the concept of cultural authentication, a theoretical construct to investigate assimilation of : material culture, is refined. The concept was originally introduced by Erekosima. In subsequent years, Eicher and Erekosima proposed four progressive levels of cultural authentication: (1) selection, (2) characterization, (3) incorporation, and (4) transformation. These stages were proposed as occurring in a fixed order. The holokū, an 1820 adaptation of western dress, is definitive of Hawaiian ethnicity. In this case study, selection was followed by transformation, then incorporation, and finally, characterization. While the concept of cultural authentication was useful for analysis of cultural diffusion of the holokū, the fixed order of the stages of cultural authentication is problematic. When an indigenous culture adopts and incorporates a western item, it is culturally authentic by virtue of its embeddedness. Cultural authenticity of an item is not reduced should the stages occur in a different order than that proposed by Eicher and Erekosima.