The Samoan category Matai ( CHIEF), A singularity in Polynesia.

Abstract

This paper has benefited from the discussions in Canberra and in Auckland in March 1999 following lectures I gave on the topic. All my thanks to Judith Huntsman, and to Margaret Jolly and Darrell Tryon, for their invitations. As is evident in the last section, Roger Green presented me with the possibility of extending my comparisons, and I am very grateful to him and Patrick Kirch for giving me some pages of what was then their manuscript on 'Ancestral Polynesian Society". Thanks also to Grace Meagher (EHESS, Marseilles) for Enlisting my first draft and to Judith Huntsman for the long and attentive work required in the final editing.