In Gender on the Edge: Transgender, Gay, and Other Pacific Islanders, Niko Besnier and Kalissa Alexeyeff have brought together a collection of original essays that include some of the finest contemporary scholarship from and about this part of the world. The Pacific,1 the editors note, remains an exemplary cultural laboratory for considering questions of sex, gender, and sexuality. Margaret Mead's (1928) research in Samoa, for example, was foundational for developing the concept of gender as socially constructed rather than biologically given. It is not surprising then that more recent political concerns in Western contexts, including the growing visibility associated with the popularization of the category transgender, has led to further expeditions to the Pacific in search of data. This volume problematizes the resurrection of these tired tropes, calling into question ongoing process of ethnocentric knowledge production in the global North through reflexive inquiry. Collectively, the volume...

You do not currently have access to this content.