This volume is dedicated to the New Zealander ethnographer Elsdon Best (1856-1931) who is a key figure in the history of anthropology due to his involuntary triggering of a fundamental and long-lasting anthropological debate on the Māori concept of hau.

New Zealander ethnographer, Elsdon Best is a key figure in the history of anthropology due to his involuntary triggering of a fundamental and long-lasting anthropological debate on the Māori concept of hau. This volume is dedicated to  this important scholar, who at the same time was shadowed by metropolitan anthropology and became an excluded ancestor, along with his Māori interlocutors and ethnographic collaborators. By recentering his place as one of anthropology’s ancestors, the volume contributes to a new perception of the discipline’s past.