MIG Business Meeting

The time and place for this year's business meeting has just been announced, so please, if you plan to attend AAA, mark your calender:

Business Meeting of the Melanesian Interest Group
11/19/2010
6:15:00 PM-8:15:00 PM
Salon 829, Eighth Floor, Sheraton


The MIG has sponsored a AAA session on Vernacular Education:

VERNACULAR EDUCATION IN THE ISLAND PACIFIC AND AMERICA. Papers in Honor of Rex Matang. ORGANIZERS: Christine Schreyer and John Wagner, University of British Columbia – Okanagan.

In this session we explore the cultural meanings of vernacular education programs in Melanesia and comparable settings where local languages are in danger of dying out or becoming moribund. Participants examine the processes through which such programs are created, the impediments to their successful implementation, and the varied meanings, symbolic and material, attached to vernacular language use in these settings. We also examine the relative 'silence' of anthropologists in relation to language endangerment and its long term consequences for cultural identity, local ecological knowledge, cultural and ecological diversity, nation-building and globalization, and how anthropologists may be able to provide a much needed 'voice' on these
topics.


Hoping to see you in New Orleans - especially at the ASAO/MIG party (details will be announced in due time)!

Susanne and Justin