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The Polynesian Society is a non-profit organization based at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Founded in 1892, the Society’s aim was the scholarly study of past and present New Zealand Māori and other Pacific Island peoples and cultures. It has pursued this aim primarily through the Journal of the Polynesian Society, a quarterly publication begun at the Society’s inception and enduring to the present.
The early issues of the Journal contain a rich repository of indigenous texts and traditions contributed by Pacific peoples, as well as by missionaries and other sojourners, often published in local languages with English translations. Among the scholars who have long contributed articles to the Journal are social/cultural anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, linguists and physical/biological anthropologists working in Micronesia and Melanesia, as well as Polynesia. More recently they have been joined by sociologists, political scientists, economists and other scholars .
Early editors of the Journal of the Polynesian Society were S. Percy Smith, W.H. Skinner and Elsdon Best. Since the mid-1950s most editors have been associated with the Anthropology Department of the University of Auckland, among them Jack Golson, Bruce G. Biggs, Murray Groves, Antony Hooper, Mervyn McLean, Geoff Irwin, Richard Moyle, Judith Huntsman and Melinda Allen, the last two being the present editors.
The University of Auckland Library and the Polynesian Society have collaborated in digitising the Journal. All volumes have now been completed, except for a rolling embargo on the most recent two years.
Many earlier Memoirs of the Polynesian Society were sent to members along with the Journal. These have been digitised in the course of the original project.
Work has now begun on digitising some of the other Memoirs and adding them to the site.
Current issues of the journal (2012-) are now available online to institutional and individual subscribers at Journal of the Polynesian Society.
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