During the 1980s, general ethnologies of Pacific cultures had become a decidedly less popular enterprise, and fin-de-siècle crisis of identity among anthropologists (who were affected especially by critical theory and post-modernist trends) altered the profile of writings on Oceania's religious life. Doubts that the whole fabric of any society could ever be summarized reached an extreme, and it became almost a given methodologically that one ought to approach a culture through one or two "windows." For example, an unusual feature of Oceanian social life might call for an explanation, and meeting the challenge to explain this feature could thereby open a vista onto the cultural whole through a justifiable special point of entry. One of these entry points might be religion—or specific aspects thereof. An intriguing traditional cult could beckon an account—one involving homosexual rites, for example...