Expected and unexpected cultural heroes

Abstract

This article is an attempt to engage with Marshall Sahlins' theory of historical transformation (1985) as well as his latest works on the agency of conjuncture (2004, 2005). It is an attempt to highlight the micro-history of some women and low ranking men on the Melanesian island of Ambrym in Vanuatu, specifically their encounter with the church and the unexpected agency resulting from this encounter. The story of how the different churches in the area got established, the way the chiefs reacted, and the power struggle between chiefs and missionaries is outlined, and placed in comparison with another perspective on the way the church got ‘rooted’ in Ambrym, and how then it travelled and spread. Having outlined the ethnography, the epistemological consequences of different perspectives on culture, change and history are discussed.