THE DIMENSIONS OF SOCIAL-LIFE IN THE PACIFIC - HUMAN-DIVERSITY AND THE MYTH OF THE PRIMITIVE ISOLATE

The Pacific has been thought of as a region in which isolated societie s are related to one another more by descent from the same ancestral t raditions than by continuing social, political, and economic interacti on. The apparent marginality of island societies has led scholars to a ssume that language, biology, and culture have coevolved in this part of the world in such an orderly fashion that language can be used to c ircumscribe populations and reconstruct their ancient migrations and c ulture history. Cultural evolution has often been conceptualized as a process of radiating differentiation from a common source or (borrowin g thought from zoology and paleontology) a process of adaptive radiati on. During the pioneering phase of anthropological held research in th e Pacific after World War II, the simplifying assumption that people w ho live on islands live isolated lives played a useful role. Now schol ars are working to improve the historical realism of their claims and reconstructions. This shift in orientation promises to unify the study of history and synchronic analysis in the Pacific as, in Alexander Le sser's words, ''parts of one universe of discourse, of one order or le vel of the human social process.''