Introduction / James J. Fox -- Hierarchy, founder ideology and Austronesian expansion / Peter Bellwood -- The elder and the younger, foreign and autochthonous origin and hierarchy in the Cook Islands / Jukka Siikala -- Rank, hierarchy and routes of migration : chieftainship in the central Caroline Islands of Micronesia / Ken-ichi Sudo -- "All threads are white" : Iban egalitarianism reconsidered / Clifford Sather -- Origin, hierarchy and egalitarianism among the Mandaya of southeast Mindanao, Philippines / Aram A. Yengoyan -- The transformation of progenitor lines of origin : patterns of precedence in eastern Indonesia / James J. Fox -- Origin structures and precedence in the social orders of Tana'ai and Sikka / E.D. Lewis -- Precedence among the domains of the three hearth stones : contestation of an order of precedence in the Ko'a ceremonial cycle (Palu'é Island, Eastern Indonesia) / Michael P. Vischer -- The founding of the house and the source of life : two complementary origin structures in Buru society / Barbara Dix Grimes -- Histories of diversity, hierarchies of unity : the politics of origins in a south-west Moluccan village / Sandra Pannell -- Rivals and wives : affinal politics and the Tongan Ramage / Aletta Biersack -- The politics of marriage and the marriage of polities in Gowa, South Sulawesi, during the 16th and 17th centuries / F. David Bulbeck -- The cultural construction of rank, identity and ethnic origins |