Melanesian Interest Group

2011 AAA News

2011-09-20T08:13:00.000-07:00

BUSINESS MEETING

Friday, November 18, 2011: 18:15-19:30

Organizers:

Justin R Shaffner (University of Cambridge) and Tate A LeFevre (New York University)

MIG SPONSORED SESSION

PRIMITIVIST ENCOUNTERS TODAY: NEW ETHNOGRAPHIES OF INDIGENOUS TOURISM

Saturday, November 19, 2011: 16:00-17:45

Organizers:

Rupert Stasch (UCSD)

Chairs:

Anke Tonnaer (Radboud University Nijmegen)

16:00

Wa Grotesque: Headhunting Theme Parks and the Chinese Nostalgia for Primitive Contemporaries

Magnus Fiskesjo (Cornell University)

16:15

Money, Morality, and Mapula (Payment) In Trobriand-Tourist Interactions

Michelle D MacCarthy (University of Auckland)

16:30

Tourists In a Differentiated Social Field: The Kinship, Geography, and Politics of Tourism Involvement In An Egalitarian Society

Rupert Stasch (UCSD)

16:45

In the Middle: Intermediaries' Relations with Tourists and Toured In Indigenous Australia

Anke Tonnaer (Radboud University Nijmegen)

17:00

"Beach-Boy Elders" and "Young Big Men": Age, Temporality, and Samburu Ethno-Erotic Economies In Postcolonial Kenya

George Paul Meiu (University of Chicago)

17:15

Discussant

Janet A Hoskins (University of Southern California)

17:30

Discussant

Francesca C Merlan (ANU)

Doctoral Scholarship in Social Anthropology, University of St Andrews

2011-04-19T07:08:00.000-07:00

Doctoral Scholarship in Social Anthropology
Centre for Pacific Studies, University of St Andrews

The St Andrews Centre for Pacific Studies invites applications from candidates with a doctoral research project in any field of Social Anthropology, with a regional focus on the Pacific. This fee waiver doctoral scholarship will start in September 2011 and cover tuition fees at the UK/EU rate (currently £3,732 per annum) for three years.

The Centre for Pacific Studies has a growing body of Faculty, affiliated researchers, postdoctoral researchers and an international cohort of doctoral students. In 2010 we hosted the highly successful ESfO2010 conference 'Exchanging Knowledge in Oceania' which drew 240 delegates from across the world. CPS collaborates with the Bergen Pacific Studies Research Group through exchanges and an annual 'North Sea, South Seas' research workshop. CPS has research expertise across the region, but most particularly in island Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia. Centre member interests include exchange processes; secrecy and knowledge practices; the urban and narratives of nationhood; sociality, kinship and ideas of the person; mining and resource extraction; the analysis of ritual; property rights; the politics of vision; epistemology; gardening; money; institutional culture and cultures of incarceration; spatio-temporality as a dimension of human being; machine thinking; colonial and postcolonial governmentality; genetic engineering; loss and exile; ontogeny as an historical process; climate change.

Further information on the on-going research work and current doctoral student projects being conducted by the Centre for Pacific Studies can be found here: http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/anthropology/centres/cps/

How to apply
To discuss proposed doctoral projects please contact either: Dr Tony Crook, Dr Adam Reed or Prof Christina Toren.

To be eligible for this scholarship, prospective students must have been offered a place on the doctoral programme by the closing date. Applications for admission can be submitted online at: http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/services/admissions/pgadmissions.html

To be considered for this scholarship, applicants should, in addition, contact Dr Tony Crook to outline their candidacy, and to submit the following: 1. a brief CV, 2. a brief research proposal, and 3. the name and contact details of one suitably qualified referee by the closing date of May 20th 2011.

Last call for panels - March 14

2011-03-07T12:45:00.000-08:00

Please submit proposals for panels that MIG could sponsor at the AAA meetings in Montreal to Justin Shaffner (jrshaffner@gmail.com) by March 14.

This year's AAA theme is Traces, Tidemarks and Legacies (see http://www.aaanet.org/meetings/2011-AAA-Annual-Meeting.cfm ). The session should be related to Melanesia in some way.

MRS is back!

2011-01-05T11:57:00.000-08:00

Dear all,

The MRS is back! Crack open your new diaries and write this down:

Friday January 21, 2011 3.30pm at the British Museum

Recent Cambridge PhD -- now at the University of Aberdeen -- Katharina Schneider has generously agreed to be our first presenter. Approximately one week before the seminar we will pre-circulate her paper, which will address the following theme:

Who sees what in Pororan marriage exchange?

Over time, anthropologists working in Melanesia have provided increasingly nuanced analyses of exchange, and specifically of the transformations of ‘objects’ and ‘images’ that people perceive in the course of particular sequences of events. One aspect of the complexity of exchange in Melanesia appears to have become sidelined, however, by a predominant interest in the temporal transformation of objects and images. This is the multiplicity of objects, images and sequences of their transformation that different participants perceive in the same sequence of events, and the politics (local and transnational) of who sees what in an exchange. The primary aim of this paper is to demonstrate this aspect of exchange ethnographically, and to discuss some of its implications for Pororan Islanders.

Planning ahead, our second presenter will be Eric Hirsch on Friday February 25 at 3.30pm. Further details will follow.

We hope as many of you as possible can make it. Meanwhile, steer clear of snowbanks!

Michael Scott

(on behalf of his fellow committee members: Lissant and Melissa)

Call for Papers

2011-01-04T11:52:00.000-08:00

Law and Culture 2011:

The present is the living past

Hosted by the University of the South Pacific School of Law,

Emalus Campus, Port Vila Vanuatu,

29 August - 31 August 2011

The question of how to make law operate effectively whilst remaining culturally appropriate is critical for all Pacific islands. This question arises, in large part, due to the particular colonial histories of Pacific countries. In order to appreciate how law operates in the current post-colonial environment and the current paths of development that we are following, and that shape our laws, we need to understand where our laws and systems have come from.

The issues that this conference theme give rise to are not only legal, or historical. Understanding the place and operation of laws is inherently interdisciplinary, and requires conversations across a range of disciplines. Pacific scholars from other subject areas, including anthropology, development studies, governance and political studies are encouraged to attend this conference.

Papers and posters that explore how the historical context shapes contemporary Pacific legal systems are invited.

Papers addressing any aspect of Pacific legal studies or post-colonial legal studies more generally are also welcomed.

The conference organisers are committed to the development of young Pacific scholars and students and early career researchers from a range of disciplines are particularly encouraged to participate.

Abstracts are due by 24 June 2011 and should be submitted via email to jowitt_a@vanuatu.usp.ac.fj .

For further information, including the abstract submission form and presentation and poster guidelines see the conference website http://www.paclii.org/law-and-culture/ .

2010 MIG update

2010-11-26T11:55:00.000-08:00

Dear members of the Melanesian Interest Group of AAA!

I'm writing to give an update from the business meeting in New Orleans. I also want to thank those who attended.

I will be the new convenor for this next year. The new convener-elect will be Tate LeFevre.

We are currently looking for a session that the MIG could sponsor at the next AAA meeting in Montreal, preferably a double session. This year's AAA theme is Traces, Tidemarks and Legacies (see http://www.aaanet.org/meetings/2011-AAA-Annual-Meeting.cfm ). The session should be related to Melanesia in some way. Please contact us if you are planning to organize such a session. Do not wait until it is all finalized and in perfect shape – it may be too late by then.

Also, please join our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=26280881106.

All the best,

Justin

MIG Business Meeting

2010-09-21T17:53:00.000-07:00

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

Announcement of Anthropology position at University of Waikato

2010-03-22T12:17:00.000-07:00

Dear friends and colleagues,

Apologies for cross posting.

We have finally managed to secure funding for an on-going (= tenure track) replacement position in Anthropology at the University of Waikato. The appointment will be at the level of Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor.

Our preference will be for someone with expertise in Oceania and, quite crucially, able to start mid-year (July 2010). We realise the latter criterion may be difficult for some well qualified candidates but we have been disadvantaged in this search by delays beyond our control.

The deadline for applications is 16 April.

The URL to download the advertisement and position description is:

http://www.waikato.ac.nz/hrm/vacancies/current.shtml

If you have any queries that cannot be answered by the information on the website or by our HRM division please feel free to contact either Anthropology Subject Convenor Judy Macdonald jmac@waikato.ac.nz or Michael Goldsmith mikegold@waikato.ac.nz.

Lastly, please do bring this to the attention of anyone whom you think might be suitable for the position or who might know someone who is.

Justice and Self-Determination in Indonesian Papua

2010-03-15T21:25:00.000-07:00

Podcasts of the Oxford Symposium on Justice and Self-Determination in
Indonesian Papua held on 6 February 2010 are now available at:

http://www.csls.ox.ac.uk/otjr.php?show=podcasts

It includes the following speakers and subjects:

Opening Remarks
Phil Clark, Convenor of Oxford Transitional Justice Research

"The Origins of Papua Nationalism"
Pieter Drooglever, Institute of Netherlands History

"The Role of the United States in the New Guinea Dispute"
Albert Kersten, University of Leiden

"Melanesian Dreams"
Jos Marey, former chairman of Papua Student Association

"Living for Independence"
Benny Wenda, Papua leader in exile

"The Genealogy and Logic of Torture in Papua: a Reflection"
Budi Hernawan, Office of Justice and Peace, Jayapura and Australian National University, Canberra

"Human Rights and Transitional Justice - Justice for Papuans?"
Jennifer Robinson, Finers Stephens Innocent LLP and Secretary of International Lawyers for West Papua

"A Roadmap for West Papua?"
Muridan Widjojo, Indonesian Academy of Sciences

"Considerations on the Right to Self-Determination"
Charles Foster, The Ethox Centre, Department of Public Health & Primary Health Care, University of Oxford

"Revisiting History and Special Autonomy for Papua"
Agus Sumule, first advisor to the governor of Papua

EU Research and the Pacific

2010-03-03T20:51:00.000-08:00

Dear Madam, Sir,

The European research and the Pacific - on the move! The European Commission to facilitate networking between European actors with a research focus on Pacific Islands. You are invited to share this information with potentially interested people and organizations from your contact/mailing lists. Thank you in advance for your help and participation.

La recherche européenne et le Pacifique - ça bouge! La Commission européenne souhaite faciliter la mise en réseau des acteurs européens dont l'objet de recherche porte sur l'Océanie. Vous êtes invités à partager cette information avec les personnes et organisations potentiellement concernées. Merci d'avance pour votre aide et votre participation.

European Commission
DG DEV E1
Relations with the countries and the region of the Pacific
Rue de la Science 15
Brussels
e-mail - dev-research-pacific@ec.europa.eu

---

EU Research and the Pacific

Why?
EU-based research initiatives on the Pacific Islands are generally not well-known and therefore hardly accessible by students, academics, private organizations and institutions such as the European Commission. The bulk of research material is provided by non-European institutes, universities and researchers. This hampers the development of Pacific-centred academics and research in Europe but also the Pacific-tailored policy making and strategy formulation.

What?
Stimulating a European research on the Pacific Islands is one of the 2006 EU strategy for the Pacific objectives. In this context, the Unit responsible for EU-Pacific relations in DG Development wishes to facilitate networking between European actors and organizations with a research focus on Oceania or with research themes relevant for the Region.

How to participate?
The first step is to establish by 31st March 2010, a comprehensive survey of researchers, universities institutes, research centres and initiatives or projects on the Pacific in the EU. The second step would be to start contacts as soon as possible to discuss objectives and expectations of such a European network on the basis of this survey.

Should you be interested please send the following information prior to 31st March 2010 to DEV-RESEARCH-PACIFIC@ec.europa.eu :

Name
Organizations and contact details
Research areas
Ongoing and upcoming projects by geographic area (including Melanesia/Micronesia/Polynesia, Timor-Leste, Australia, New Zealand);
Partnerships with other national/European/non-European organizations;
Views on the added-value of establishing an European network and on expectations vis-à-vis the European Commission.

VACANT POSITION Medical Anthropology, University of Papua New Guinea

2010-02-25T09:21:00.000-08:00

Application Deadline: March 5 2010

The University of Papua New Guinea 2010 Position Vacancies
(as published in the Post Courier, Monday, February 8, 2010, on page 34 - for full ad)

School of Humanities and Social Sciences
Anthropology and Sociology Strand
Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor W/011003/10

The discipline of Anthropology and Sociology at the UPNG has an immediate vacancy in the area of MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY.

The successful candidate will be appointed at Senior Lecturer or Associate Professor level depending on qualification, experience and skills. This position is not restricted to PNG citizens.
The relevant qualification for the appointment is a PhD level although candidates with qualifications at MA/MS/MBBS level with sound background in social research and design, professional nursing, public health, and delivery of tertiary educational programs within Asia-Pacific region are certainly desirable and encouraged to apply.

The successful candidate is expected to design and drive a holistic program focused on Anthropology of HIV/Aids and epidemiology of Melanesia at undergraduate and graduate levels. The program should be able to link existing programs and courses in anthropology and sociology and courses in Public Health at the School of Medicine and Health Sciences. The candidate must be highly skilled while remaining cultural sensitive and alert to changes on health issues in Melanesia and beyond.

Salary
Senior Lecturer K33,281 – K 40,677 per annum
Appropriate DMA and ATA calculated at 20% of base salary plus DMA will be added on the base salary.
The University is an equal opportunity employer and encourages females to apply for the positions.

Written applications should also include a Curriculum Vitae, a recent small photograph, the names and addresses of three (3) referees qualified to make comments about the suitability of the applicants. In order to expedite the appointment procedures, applicants are advised to contact their referees to send confidential reports directly to the University without waiting to be contacted.

All applicants will be treated strictly confidential, AND WILL CLOSE ON 05th MARCH, 2010.

Applications should be forwarded to the Director, Human Resources Management Division, UPNG, PO Box 320, UNIVERSITY, National Capital District, or faxed to +675 326.7187 or emailed to staffadm@upng.ac.pg

Jennifer G. Popat, Registrar.

3-year Post-doctoral position: Artefacts of Encounter project

2010-02-25T09:14:00.000-08:00

The advertisement for a 3-year post-doctoral position on the Artefacts of Encounter project:

http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/offices/hr/jobs/vacancies.cgi?job=6314

The closing date is March 21.

Conference on Development

2010-02-25T09:02:00.001-08:00

February 26-28, 2010

An international development conference bringing together students, faculty, and experts from Standford University and institutions across Papua New Guinea.

Conference website: http://www.panango.org/indexpng.html

MIG update

2010-01-13T08:53:00.000-08:00

Dear members of the Melanesian Interest Group of AAA!

This is to wish you a lovely 2010 and introduce ourselves. Susanne Kuehling is the convener for the next year, and the new convener-elect is Justin Shaffner. We are looking forward to a year of good networking and hope to see many of you at the upcoming ASAO conference in Alexandria, and the ESfO conference in St Andrews in July.

We are currently looking for a session(s?) that MIG could sponsor at the next AAA meeting in New Orleans. It should be related to Melanesia in some way. We invite you to be creative in your interpretations and look forward to hearing from you!

Cheers,

Susanne Kuehling and Justin Shaffner

ASAO 2010 Annual Meeting

2009-12-31T09:25:00.000-08:00

Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania
Annual Meeting: February 9-13, 2010
Crowne Plaza Hotel, Old Towne, Alexandria, Virginia USA

MEETING REGISTRATION: DEADLINE FOR EARLY REGISTRATION IS TODAY, DECEMBER 31!!!
• The 2010 meeting registration and membership renewal form was sent to all who were members in 2009. A blank form is available on the ASAO website. The form, together with your registration fee and membership dues, to the ASAO Treasurer, Mary McCutcheon.
• Checks should be payable to “ASAO” and in U.S. dollars or the equivalent amount in other currencies.
• Credit cards are also accepted: please see the “PayPal” instructions on the ASAO website at: http://www.asao.org/pacific/membership.htm
• Deadline for registering before the meetings is December 31. After that date, onsite registration only. Onsite payments made be made by check, credit card/PayPal, or cash.

HOTEL AND MEETING ROOMS: DEADLINE FOR RESERVATIONS AT CONFERENCE RATE IS JANUARY 10!
• Accommodations have been arranged for ASAO members at the Crowne Plaza Hotel for a special rate of US$139 (+ tax) per night for single or double rooms.
• Hotel information is on the ASAO website : http://www.asao.org/pacific/futuremeetings.htm
• Deadline for hotel reservations at the reduced conference rate: January 10.

GROUND TRANSPORTATION
• Free hotel shuttle to Ronald Reagan National Airport and the Metro (the station at the airport).
• Taxi fare to the hotel from Dulles International Airport is $40-$50.
• Super Shuttle from Dulles International Airport to the hotel is $35 for a shared ride. Reservations for the Super Shuttle must be made before you arrive. Call tollfree 1-800-258-3826 or reserve online at http://www.supershuttle.com.

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS (FOR MORE DETAILS, SEE THE DECEMBER NEWSLETTER)
Tuesday, Feb. 9th
• Board meeting (evening)

Wednesday, Feb. 10
• Board meeting (morning)
• Registration desk and book exhibit open (afternoon)
• Special tour: Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, Museum Support Center,, Suitland, Maryland (afternoon, details to be announced)
• Session organizers meeting (evening)
• Opening Plenary Session (evening)
• Welcome Party (evening)

Thursday, Feb. 11
• Sessions (all day)
• Registration desk and book exhibit open (all day)

Friday, Feb. 12 Sessions (all day)
• Registration desk and book exhibit open (all day)
• Distinguished lecture (Adrienne Kaeppler) and reception (evening)

Saturday, Feb. 13
• Sessions (all day)
• Registration desk and book exhibit open (morning only)
•Closing Plenary Session (evening)

ESfO 2010 'Exchanging Knowledge in Oceania'

2009-12-19T10:32:00.000-08:00

European Society for Oceanists, 8th Conference
ESfO 2010 'Exchanging Knowledge in Oceania'
St Andrews, July 5th - 8th 2010

Firstly, we are pleased to announce the following keynote talks:

Monday 5th July: Professor Dame Marilyn Strathern (University of Cambridge) will give the Sir Raymond Firth Memorial Lecture.
Tuesday 6th July: Professor Marcia Langton (University of Melbourne).
Wednesday 7th July: Associate Professor Vicente Diaz, (University of Michigan).
Thursday 8th July: Rt. Hon. Ralph Regenvanu MP (Vanuatu National Cultural Council).

Secondly, due to the popularity of the conference and to give intending delegates more time to secure funding and to confirm their attendance, the Call for Papers Deadline has now been extended to 31st January 2010. Although some working sessions are over-subscribed, there is still space in many others, and all of the twenty-four working sessions remain open.

Conference registration is now open. Bookings for accommodation, meals, social events etc can be made through an online shop. The registration page has details of options and prices and can be found here: http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/esfo2010/registration/

ESfO 2010 website: http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/esfo2010

Hailans to Ailans

2009-07-10T07:06:00.000-07:00

Hailans to Ailans (hailanstoailans.com) is a two part exhibition showing work in a variety of media by five contemporary Papua New Guinea artists and two artists of the Coast Salish nation.

Part 1 opens at the Rebecca Hossack Gallery, London, UK, on September 16, 2009 and runs through October 17. Other events include a live art installation with bilum wear by Cathy Kata, produced with the participation of of Pacific artist Rosanna Raymond, and a performance by Michael Mel at 6.30 p.m. on September 24th.

Part 2 opens at Alcheringa Gallery, Victoria, B.C. on November 5, 2009 and runs to November 26. Other scheduled events will include a ceremonial welcome by the Coast Salish people and a performance by Michael Mel. Please consult the exhibition webpage for further details about the artists and events. An online catalogue of essays and artist interviews will also be available on the webpage in August.Hailans to Ailans is curated by Pamela Rosi (Bridgewater College, MA) and Michael Mel (University of Goroka, EHP).

2009-02-28T11:42:00.000-08:00

KAUAGE: ARTIST OF PAPUA NEW GUINEA

an exhibition at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
University of Cambridge

March 18-April 18 2009

Opening event, with lecture by Georgina Beier, on March 17, from 3 pm
**

Mathias Kauage was an exuberant painter and a founding figure of modern art in the Pacific.

Kauage (c. 1944-2003) was born in Chimbu Province in the Papua New Guinea highlands. In the late 1960s he was employed as a labourer in Port Moresby and was inspired by an exhibition of drawings by a fellow-Highlander, Timothy Akis. Like Akis, he was encouraged by Georgina Beier. Together with her husband Ulli, Georgina influentially supported contemporary art, theatre, and literature in Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, and elsewhere.

Kauage’s work evolved rapidly. Early on he drew fantastic creatures inspired by Chimbu myth, but soon progressed to scenes of Moresby town life and political events. Embracing colour, he went on to produce major paintings around Papua New Guinea’s Independence in 1975, aspects of colonial history, and his own experience – not least his meeting with the Queen, who awarded him an OBE in 1998. His later works were often signed ‘Kauage – Artist of PNG’.

This exhibition foregrounds a previously unexhibited group of early Kauage drawings and beaten copper panels, which form part of a generous donation to the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology by Dame Marilyn Strathern (William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology, 1993-2008), who conducted fieldwork in the PNG Highlands and in Port Moresby from the 1960s onward.
Visitors to the exhibition also get the chance to listen to a rare early recording of Kauage singing and playing Chimbu instruments such as a bamboo flute.

‘Kauage: Artist of Papua New Guinea’ is a revelation of Kauage’s creativity. His unique intelligence and visual inventiveness suggest new ways of thinking about the emergence of ‘modern art’ beyond the West.

On Tuesday March 17, a public lecture and symposium coincide with the exhibition opening. Georgina Beier will speak on Creating his own tradition at 2.30 pm in the McDonald Seminar Room, in the McDonald Institute (off Downing Street, directly adjacent to the Museum). Helena Regius, Ruth Phillips, and Nicholas Thomas will contribute to a panel discussion.

**
The Museum plans in due course to publish a catalogue of the collection, together with Marilyn’s previous donation of textiles from Hara Hara Prints, a screenprint workshop in which Georgina Beier also played a key role (see Strathern, ‘Emblems, ornaments and inversions of value’ in Kuechler and Were (eds), The Art of Clothing, UCL Press 2005). In the context of this project, we would be most interested to hear from anthropologists and others who were in Port Moresby in the 1970s or subsequently, and own original works by Kauage or contemporaries, and/or may be able to help with relevant information.
Nicholas Thomas
njt35 [at] cam.ac.uk

News and Call for AAA 2009 MIG Proposals

2009-02-27T08:51:00.000-08:00

As many of you have probably surmised, Susanne Kuehling was elected as convener elect for the Melanesia Interest Group. She and I will be in touch with many of you as we organize for next years AAAs. On that note, we are still soliciting ideas for panels and we hope that those of you heading off to the ASAO meetings this week will give some thought/ discussion to topics and themes that would fit the bill of a Melanesian Interest Group session. MIG sessions have always sought to communicate the relevance of Melanesia to a wider audience, and typically include comparisons within the Pacific and with other regions of the world.

The theme for next year’s meetings suggests many possibilities along these lines and is titled “The End/s of Anthropology.” The AAA invites considerations of the end as ‘both conclusions and purposes,’ and I would think that the overlap of these two meanings would speak to certain sensibilities in the Pacific. Conference organizers have suggested the following sub-foci: The end/s of relativism, the end/s of identity, and the end/s of publics. All of which are certainly areas in which MIG members have expertise.

For further elaboration on the theme please see: http://www.aaanet.org/meetings/presenters/Meeting-Theme.cfm

Also I’d like to invite folks to join us on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=26280881106

Cheers,

Jamon Halvaksz and Susanne Kuehling

Lecturer in the Arts of the Pacific (University of East Anglia)

2008-12-01T09:10:00.001-08:00

While people may have see the following on the AAA job center, I thought the following position was worth advertising here on the blog as it is for someone working in the Pacific (and thus Melanesia). I should disclose I held this position for three years (2005-08) and thoroughly enjoyed the intellectual and social environment of the Sainsbury Research Unit and the larger school of World Art Studies at the University of East Anglia. The teaching load is light (by all standards) and there is wide ranging scope for and support for developing one's own research.

Lecturer in the Arts of the Pacific in United Kingdom

Salary: 37,651.00 - 43,622.00
Type: Full Time - Middle

Applications are invited for an indefinite full-time Lectureship in the Sainsbury Research Unit for the Arts of Africa, Oceania & the Americas, School of World Art Studies and Museology, University of East Anglia, UK, to commence on 1 September 2009. Primary responsibilities include co-teaching an MA course, supervising graduate students, limited undergraduate teaching and participation in research projects. See www.sru.uea.ac.uk for further information on the Sainsbury Research Unit. The closing date for applications is 19 January 2009 and interviews are expected to be held on 27 February 2009. Further particulars and an application form can be obtained from the University's web page at: http://www.uea.ac.uk/hr/jobs/ or by e-mail at hr@uea.ac.uk or by calling the answerphone on 01603 593493 or by mail to the Human Resources Division, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ. Please quote the appropriate reference number.

Requirements:
Applicants should have a doctorate in anthropology, art history, archaeology or a related subject and should have fieldwork experience, strong interests in visual arts, a good record of original research and the capacity for research led instruction. Expertise in museum anthropology and theoretical approaches to material culture is desirable.

Preferred Education: Doctorate

NOTES: International Candidates Will Be Considered. Employer will assist with relocation costs.
Additional Salary Information: Salary is in GBP Sterling.

Apply online at http://careercenter.aaanet.org/jobdetail.cfm?job=3037333.32

Papers that engage with Melanesia at the 2008 AAA

2008-11-11T08:42:00.000-08:00

The following is a list of 30 papers and 3 panels (with two or more papers) that deal with Melanesia in addition to the MIG sponsored session Cultures of Christian Conversion (co-sponsored by the AAA Executive Committee) organized and chaired by John Barker will be taking place on Sunday, November 23rd from 8am to 11.45am (see the previous blog post). These papers address topics as diverse as language loss in Santa Cruz (Emerine), social and digital ontologies at the Vanuatu Cultural Centre (Geismar), HIV/AIDS in PNG (Cox), environmental crisis in the Murik Lake region (Lipset) and the novel Gwe (Perey). The three panels are Making Modernities in Youth Cultures (Brison), Decline: Deterioration amid expectations of progress (Jacka & Knauft) and Marine protected areas: Emerging issues in collaboration, inclusion, and engagement in marine resource governance (Carothers & Levine). The diversity of topics is a testiment to the membership.

I have gleaned this list from the AAA data base using various keywords and therefore may have missed things. If there are more then one paper in a session I have listed the abstract of the session. Please feel free to let me know if I missed anything.

11/19/2008

Feasts of Men or Kana Tamata: Interdisciplinary Data on Cannibalism in Fiji
Sharyn Jones
Session Title: Using the Past to Understand the Future: Bioarchaeology and Forensics
Session Time: 12:00 PM - 01:45 PM

Abstract: In this presentation we describe archaeological, ethnographic, isotopic, and human skeletal evidence for cannibalism in Fiji. We review and summarize data from several locations and archaeological sites, describing four lines evidence from which to examine this practice: 1) frequency data for human bones recovered from middens and evidence of conflagration; 2) isotopic signatures for reconstructing human diet; 3) worked human bones, and other tools; and, 4) human bones examined via macroscopic and/or histologic methods. In particular, attention is paid to sharp force toolmark locations and the types of implements used in the creation of the incised marks on bone. Finally, we explore how anthropologists may classify this practice as dietary or ritual cannibalism.

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Seva, Bhakti, and the Politics of Pain: A Rhetoric of National Belonging among Hindus in Fiji
Susanna Trnka
Session Title: Emblematic Religious Politics
Session Time: 04:00 PM - 05:45 PM

Abstract: Much of Western scholarship on pain has highlighted the alienating and isolating qualities of physical pain, in particular pain's ability to force the social remove of the sufferer from society (cf. Arendt 1958; Scarry 1985), in the process overshadowing cases where physical pain draws individuals together, in some instances, becoming the basis for religious, ethnic, and political identity. This paper considers the place of pain and physical suffering from the latter perspective, examining how physical pain is perceived as both an integral element of religious identity and a platform for assertions of political rights among Indo-Fijian Hindus, Fiji's second largest religious and ethnic group. Specifically, I argue that contemporary Indo-Fijians, the vast majority of whom identify as Sanatan Hindus, emphasize the pain, suffering, and sacrifices of physical labor integral to their historical legacy as indentured laborers in order to highlight their contributions to the Fijian nation. Articulated through the religious idioms of seva and bhakti, as popularized by sanatan missionaries in Fiji in the 1930s, pain, and in particular pain linked to physical labor, can be conceptualized in contemporary discourse as a marker of Indo-Fijians' religious and ethnic identity. As part of a rhetoric of national belonging, pain further comes to carry Indo-Fijian claims to political rights. Rather than forcing an individual's alienation from his or her social group, physical pain in this context acts as an index of labor, a marker of sacrifice and devotion, and a bid for national belonging on the part of a marginalized ethnic-religious group.

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Technologies and Topologies of Nationalism in West Papua
Eben Kirksey
Session Title: Including Nationalist-Minorites (Others) in Exclusive Nationalist-Discourse: some new theoretical considerations for nationalism and anthropology
Session Time: 06:00 PM - 07:45 PM

Abstract: The role of print media has been well documented in the generation of national imagined communities. This technology generates a sort of homogeneity—a literate public united by a standardized language—that many scholars regard as an essential feature of true nationalist movements. The very idea of nationalism has become a site of negotiation and translation as we enter the early 21st century. In West Papua, the half of New Guinea under Indonesian administration, surprising political results are being achieved by a nationalist movement without literacy and other sorts of cultural homogeneity. Here over 270 distinct indigenous groups have dreams of forming a new united nation. The Single Side Band radio, a communications technology that does not depend on literacy, actively generates cultural and linguistic heterogeneity in West Papua even it is used to popularize dreams of national independence from Indonesia. Multiple partially-overlapping transportation infrastructures also help channel the flow of freedom dreams through West Papua. In the face of failing national projects throughout the world—in the face of neo-imperial schemes and postcolonial suffering in many corners of the globe—potentially sympathetic policy makers are grappling with very serious questions when confronted with demands for recognition from emergent nations. New independence movements must convince the world that there is substance to their claims. Annemarie Mol and John Law have illustrated how a single phenomena can inhabit network, regional, and “fluid” topologies. Their work offers a way of thinking about the forces that generate national integration amidst cultural and linguistic heterogeneity. Departing from their work, I suggest that the nation of West Papua is a networked place, a region, and fluid space.

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Making Modernities in Youth Cultures
Session Time: 06:00 PM - 09:45 PM
Organizer: Karen Brison
Chair: Karen Brison

Abstract: This session explores the way children and youth construct identities in dialog with global ideologies conveyed through mass media, Pentecostal churches, schools, migration of populations, and other global “scapes.” In a now classic work, Appadurai (1996) argued that global modernity involves a rupture from past certainties and creates increased scope for imagining new kinds of identities in dialogue with global ideologies. “Modernity” itself is an imagined state involving increased individual autonomy, universalism, and identity defined through consumption of “modern” goods and behaviors. More recent works have suggested even greater fluidity, with “identities” and ”modernities,” situationally defined and varying across context. Children and adolescents are often in the forefront of the process of shaping “modernities” because: i) they attend schools that follow international philosophies and institutional patterns and promote “modern” citizenship as locally defined (e.g. Stambach 2000); ii) their lives are saturated by mass media prompting identification with international, gendered, youth communities; and iii) they are often targeted by institutions like Pentecostal churches which promote an ideology of individual achievement and self-mastery as well as encouraging people to imagine themselves as parts of international communities. The papers in this session examine children and adolescents as active agents who take in these various messages within particular local conditions and use them to make sense of their own lives. In the process, they build new kinds of identities and modernities, imagining themselves as embedded in new kinds of extra-local communities such as nations, international religious communities, and international gendered communities such as athletes, rock stars and beauty queens. Examining these emergent identities gives new insight into the fluid, multivalent and context bound nature of modernities and identities, as well as to the agency of children and youth. The papers explore youth constructions of identity and modernity in Asia (Grimes-MacLellan, Jung, Davis, and Dixon), the Pacific (Brison, Dewey, Good, Vaughan), Latin America (Campoamar, Anderson-Fye), Africa (Dahl, Yamakawa), and among immigrant adolescents in the US (Braga, Esser). Dewey, Campoamar, Davis, Dahl, Vaughan, and Grimes-MacLellan look at the way that children reinterpret ideas about citizenship and nation, received from government, schools and NGOs, which may, in turn, conflict with messages received in other contexts. Dahl argues that international NGOs promote “modern” identities among AIDS orphans that conflict with the gerontocratic and family structured Botswana culture. Grimes-McClellan analyzes the way that Japanese teenagers, confronted with contradictory local and international discourses of optimism and pessimism create novel ways of viewing self and economic trajectory. Anderson-Fye, Esser, and Braga examine the experience of immigrant adolescents whose distinctive ethnic and gendered identities are formed in dialog with American constructions of “culture.” While Good examines the impact of international massmedia on Tongan ideas about romance. Many of the papers focus on schoolchildren who form novel conceptions of self and ethnicity blending their experiences in school, home and church. Brison, for instance, argues that kindergarten children in ethnically plural Fiji are creating an ethnically neutral, class-based, identity that mystifies and dismays adults.

I’m just a regular white girl’: Emerging Middle Class Identities in Fijian Kindergartens
Karen Brison

Abstract: This paper explores the emergence of a new, ethnically neutral, middle class identity among Fijian kindergarten children, which mystified and dismayed parents and teachers. A growing number of middle class children were only passively bilingual in their ethnic languages, despite their parents’ desires, and referred to themselves as “Europeans” or “white kids,” regardless of skin color or ethnic background. Children received contradictory messages about modernity and ethnic traditions from teachers and parents. Most adults voiced deep ethnic prejudices and almost all families participated in extended family networks and numerous cultural rituals. Local parenting and teaching were also molded by traditional gerontocratic local values. Yet many middle class families belonged to Pentecostal churches that encouraged people to see themselves as part of a global “kingdom culture,” and cautioned about “anti-modern” communal practices hampered individual spiritual and economic development. In addition, many middle class children attended “multiracial” schools where the medium of communication was English and teachers thought of themselves as conveying “modern” values, although they frequently drew on local values and discussed ethnic differences in essentialist terms. I argue that the “white kid” category indicates the growing importance of class-based cultures in Fiji and reflects the experiential world of urban children. I also suggest that boys situated themselves in an international community of macho young men while girls imagined themselves to be part of global religious communities.

“We Fijian Boys Like to Play with Guns”: Negotiating Preschool Under Military Rule in Fiji
Susan Dewey

Abstract: Colonial-era schools in Fiji were segregated as part of a divide-and-rule strategy that sought to separate indigenous Fijians from South Asian (Indo-Fijian) contract laborers; this pattern largely continued after independence as part of a stress on mother-tongue education that functioned to divide many members of the two major ethnic groups into different schools. Fiji has experienced four coups since 1987, most recently in December 2006, all of which were justified at least in part by the political manipulation of public perceptions on cultural and economic differences between indigenous Fijians and Indo-Fijians. The 2006 coup was staged on the premise that its interim military government would, as its propaganda often announces, “move the nation forward to build a better Fiji for all”, although rather than increased ethnic harmony the results were rising inflation, suspension of foreign aid and increased economic difficulties for most families. As the title of this paper (drawn from a statement made by a four-year-old) suggests, preschoolers in Fiji make assessments of cultural and ethnic differences that combine with experiences in the home and other settings to help construct their views of children and adults from other ethnic groups. This paper follows a group of four year olds nine months after the 2006 coup as they prepare for their preschool’s end-of-year “cultural pageant” that sought to showcase the cultural uniqueness of each group yet also proved a site for numerous contestatations by children of adult perceptions regarding ethnicity.

Kepping the culture to keeps us sane
Jacquelyn Lewis-Harris

Abstract: Researchers have maintained that identity construction among Pacific Island groups is a subtle, ever-evolving self-defining situation (Linnekin and Poyer 1990; Mallon 1997; Morton 1998), this is observably apparent in the lives of children of Papua New Guinea immigrants in Australia. Many have embraced their parent’s indigenous cultures as a process of developing their identities within extra-local communities and in reaction to external dominant culture influences. A parallel is to be found among Hawaiian-descendent and Pacific Island children in isolated communities on the island of Oahu. School curriculum, sports, peer group pressure and the influences of MTV, BET and VHI, other popular mass media contribute to the formation of new modernities, in an unanticipated way. Participation in the arts, culturally sensitive curriculum and other related activities appear to provide students an alternative venue through which to sustain their identity development (Gibson and Ogbu 1991, Jones, Pang Rodriguez 2004, Howard and Scott 2006). This paper will compare student internalization of external influences in forming new senses of cultural identity and modernities under sometimes-hostile circumstances. It will also discuss the resultant cultural forms that lead to a contemporary interpretation of older cultural norms and values.

Picturing futures: Participation, Photovoice and young people's health in Papua New Guinea
Cathy Vaughan

Abstract: Representations of Highlands youth – including in the national media and international development discourse – tend to be constraining in the extreme. Young people are associated with violence and guns, unemployment and aimlessness, and negative health outcomes including HIV infection. However, young Papua New Guineans are competent social actors negotiating the rapid change associated with colliding life worlds. Taking young Papua New Guineans’ views seriously is a prerequisite to outsiders, working in fields such as community development or HIV prevention, being in a position to enter into any kind of dialogue with them about health. This paper will present preliminary findings from qualitative research undertaken with three youth groups in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea between November 2006 and September 2007. I will outline the research process (Photovoice) which worked to create a space where young people’s views on health could be acknowledged and given recognition, and to redefine the vague notion of “empowerment” in terms of identity change – from restricted and limiting identities to more open and enabling ones – through participation. I will show how participation in a research process fostering self reflection and self representation may influence young people’s perceptions and experiences of possible futures in a rapidly changing environment, and how this relates to health related behaviour and decision making in settings of limited resources. Implications for youth focused health and development programs in Papua New Guinea will be discussed.

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Indigenous ecological knowledge as situated practice: Understanding fishers’ knowledge in the Western Solomon Islands.

Matthew Lauer
Session Title: Dynamics of Power: Indigenous Self-Governance, Ecological Knowledge, and Natural Resource Management
Session Time: 08:00 PM - 09:45 PM

Abstract: Interest in indigenous knowledge has grown dramatically in recent years. Researchers and practitioners across many disciplines now recognize that local people’s knowledge, perceptions, and cosmologies are useful and important ingredients for sustainable and socially just development and resource management interventions, or for understanding ecological change. In this talk, I scrutinize current theoretical constructs and epistemological assumptions informing indigenous knowledge studies in the context of an ongoing research and environmental management program among fisherfolk of Roviana Lagoon, Solomon Islands. I detail how Roviana ideas call to question prevailing models of knowledge that emphasize cognitive aspects over other modalities of knowing. From the Roviana point of view, ecological knowledge is not analytically separated from the changing contexts of everyday human activities such as navigating and fishing. Instead, knowledge is immanent in the life of the knower as it unfolds through actual engagement and performance of environmentally situated activities. Inspired by Roviana epistemology, I argue that a practice-oriented approach provides a more sympathetic and informative theoretical framework for understanding local knowledge. It affords critical insights into the nature of knowledge and processes of learning by urging us to consider the dynamic, micro-processes involved in everyday activities. This perspective is shown to be particularly useful for interpreting the results of indigenous knowledge studies in the Solomon Islands that have involved the integration of indigenous knowledge, remote sensing techniques, Geographic Information System (GIS) technologies, and marine science.

11/20/2008

Language Endangerment and Shift of Nagu in the Solomon Islands
Rachel Emerine
Session Title: Society of Linguistic Anthropology
Session Time: 08:00 AM - 09:45 AM

Abstract: In the Pacific Islands, many small languages are undocumented and disappearing. On the island of Santa Cruz in the Solomon Islands, the Nagu language is endangered. In 1976, 311 people spoke Nagu, but at the time of the last census in 1999, there were only 206 speakers, a 34% decrease in less than 15 years. The decrease is not the result of death, but of people using a different language. What is the cause of language shift on this small island? Nagu is part of the Reefs-Santa Cruz language family that includes two other languages on Santa Cruz and Aiwoo in the nearby Reefs Islands. In the past 20 years, the Nagu people have intermarried with the Aiwoo. When the Aiwoo and Nagu intermarry, Aiwoo may become the dominant language used in the family, replacing Nagu. My research will examine this occurrence. Throughout the past 30 years, the use of Solomon Islands Pijin has increased. Pijin is used as the lecture language in schools and church. This language may also be dominating domains where Nagu was traditionally used. This is my second avenue of exploration. In summer 2008, I will go to the Solomon Islands for nine weeks. During this time, I will conduct interviews and observe interactions to determine the cause of language shift among Nagu speakers. Through my research, I hope to determine why the shift is occurring, document aspects of the Nagu language, and evaluate if revitalization of the Nagu language is possible.

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Scientific Research and Political Engagement in New Caledonia
Bensa Alban
Session Title: From Reflexivity to Action: Toward a History of Anthropological Engagement
Session Time: 08:00 AM - 11:45 AM

Abstract: The boost that Kanak militants gave to New Caledonia’s decolonization process from 1984 onwards challenged specialists of the archipelago’s social and political life to interpret the period that, even today, is known as “the Events”. This situation convinced me to try to re-evaluate the existing scientific knowledge about Kanak society. The Kanak acutely desired to regain, along with their dignity, a larger measure of autonomy in all domains. This movement questioned ethnology’s capacity to analyze “on the spot” the decisive emergence on the national and international scene of a people that until then had been ignored. However, while expertise characteristically involves the clarification of a political debate by a knowledgeable expert, my engagement went beyond this. The Kanak nationalist movement’s intention to make their objectives both understood and recognized took me across the border between social science and politics. What good are the social sciences if they cannot also put their tools and findings to use in aiding necessary social transformations? It seemed to me that ethnology’s involvement in political debate, far from corrupting or trivializing it, instead – according also to an ethic duty - enriched the discipline by allowing reflection on the transient and circumstantial nature of its proposals. Experts’ arguments are difficult to dissociate from political arguments. Clarifying a situation is never independent from the desire to transform it, and for any problematic situation described it is always possible to point the way towards the solutions it could need.

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The Cultural Biography of Langalanga Landscape
Pei-yi Guo
Session Title: Contact Zones II: Situating Landscapes among Geopolitical Relations, Territorialities and Identities
Session Time: 04:00 PM - 05:45 PM

Abstract: The Langalanga people dwell for generations on artificial or semi-artificial islets along the central-west coast of Malaita Island, Solomon Islands. On the one hand, for various ecological, safety and economic reasons, Langalanga people transform the lagoon landscape into chains of residential islets, especially in the form of people-built islands. In addition to human agents, others creatures (shells, fish, sharks and marine botany) and natural phenomena (earthquake, cyclones) also play important roles in the transformation of Langalanga landscape. On the other hand, the changing landscape—including the constructed and destructed islets, the numeral of shells and fish in the lagoon, and the mythic legends and ancestral histories embedded in places—also shapes how the Langalanga experience the life-world, develop modes of economy, and construct their group identity. This paper explores the interrelationships between landscape and people in Langalanga lagoon, especially in the recent context of tourism and land dispute. In light of Igor Kopytoff and Arjun Appadurai’s work on the ‘social life of things’, I will look into the social life of Langalanga landscape, and examine how landscape moves in and out of commodity phase in the transformation of Langalanga society and culture. I argue that the approach of the cultural biography of landscape could highlight the process of entanglement between people and the natural worlds.

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The Role of Anthropology in Combating the Spread of HIV in Rural Papua New Guinea
Nara Cox
Session Title: Anthropology, Advocacy, Agency, and Identity
Session Time: 04:00 PM - 05:45 PM

Abstract: Engaging the 2008 AAA theme of “Inclusion, Collaboration & Engagement” this poster draws attention to how anthropological training and insight can be collaboratively harnessed to assist local governments, missionary groups, and foreign aid workers in better serving rural populations. Focusing on local understandings of HIV/AIDS in rural areas of Papua New Guinea, this poster addresses (1) how kinship and gender norms affect the spread of infection, and (2) how Christian Missionary and Government messages regarding AIDS are interpreted by rural populations. Anthropology’s potential for facilitating the translation of biomedical understandings into more readily recognizable and comprehensible forms for such rural communities is tremendous. Likewise our viability as participants, “interpreters,” and analysts of: (a) current educational and preventative approaches being taken, and (b) the cross-cultural viability of various programs and measures. The 2008 AAA theme thus provides an ideal opportunity to highlight the applicability of anthropological knowledge across domains all too often underappreciated by non-anthropological publics. Years of occasionally dangerous, usually challenging, and often exhausting fieldwork is spent with people we typically come to love, respect, and, most importantly, understand. This understanding is the heart of our field, but it can—and often should—serve as an instigation to appropriate action: such as taking active roles in the formation and enactment of new educational plans to more fully inform, equip, and empower rural communities to protect themselves. Anthropologists have much to offer in the fight against HIV/AIDS in rural (and other) settings and it is time to offer it.

11/21/2008

Decline: Deterioration amid expectations of progress
Session Time: 08:00 AM - 11:45 AM
Organizer: Jerry Jacka
Co-Organizer(s): Bruce Knauft

Abstract: Against narratives of globalization and progress, of opportunity and connection, people in significant parts of the world find themselves instead in both real and perceived circumstances of decline and deterioration. Bringing this pattern into relief, a range of developing countries have centers of social and economic development where lucrative natural resources or capital elites are prominent, and others, often the majority, where public services are poor, infrastructure is crumbling or deteriorated, and wages are very low to non-existent. The experience and threat of decline amid widespread modern images of wealth and progress poses particular challenges, often resulting in cycles of self-criticism or abnegation, abjection, or, alternatively, the adoption of highly compensatory beliefs and practices, including evangelical Christianity, other forms of religious fundamentalism, or direct action against states or other institutions believed to be obstructing progress. This session will critically address ideas of decline or deterioration themselves, e.g., where these notions stand in terms of local vis-a-vis imparted beliefs, including capitalist / development / Christian, politically modernist, and various notions of environmental or health decline, and so forth. There lingers neo-colonial projection or self-satisfied hubris in the very idea of others' "decline." At the same time, both conditions and national and local beliefs / attitudes / perceptions of decline or deterioration do seem to resonate in some areas, often creating conditions for social and environmental nostalgia. These issues take on special poignancy in Melanesia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and a number of other world areas that have long been perceived and sometimes self-perceived as marginal to the world economy. This session will address these issues and put them in critical theoretical perspective.

"They have forced us back to the ground": Narrating Decline in Tari, Papua New Guinea
Holly Wardlow

Abstract: A former colonial District Officer (turned mining company Community Liaison Officer) once told me that Tari had won the “Prettiest Town” prize during the days of the Australian administration. Tari most certainly would not have won this prize in 2004. I had last lived in Tari in 1997, and since that time the major stores, the bank, the post office, and many primary schools and health centers had closed. Tari had been declared a “no-go zone” by some NGOs, and civil servants had fled the area because of an escalation in crime, including home invasions and the armed holdup of vehicles. An increase in HIV/AIDS had also occurred during this same period of time. In this paper I describe some of the events and processes that led to this nadir in Tari’s postcolonial history. I then analyze Huli (the ethnic group that lives in the Tari area) people’s competing narratives about this rapid socio-economic decline. At times people asserted that the national and provincial governments were conspiring to force Huli people “back to the ground”—that is, back into pre-colonial subsistence living, in order to weaken them as an ethnic group and to appropriate the natural resources (gold, natural gas) that, according to Huli people, rightfully belong to them. These same people at other moments blamed themselves, asserting that sin or the violation of customary taboos had caused the downward spiral. Socio-economic decline set in motion a “bi-polar” narrative pattern in which accusation alternated with abjection.

The Road to Development: Culture, Identity Formation and Millennial Fantasies in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea.
Sandra Bamford

Abstract: Most discussions of the “development industry” have assumed that development represents an external agenda that is imposed on local peoples by outside actors (i.e., the state or international NGOs). In this paper, I describe a different situation. The Kamea of Papua New Guinea have been waiting for their “development ship” to come in for decades. In the wake of ongoing and continual disappointment, they have taken matters in their own hands and are in the process of building a vehicular road that would bisect nearly half the country. In this paper, I describe the social and political ramifications of this project. In particular, I focus on newly emerging forms of ethnic identity and how they articulate with shifting views of the nation state.

'Back To The Village:' Christianity, Development, and Decline in a Melanesian Society
Ryan Schram

Abstract: In Auhelawa, a rural society of Papua New Guinea, people speak of their history in terms of two epochs, the time before Christianity and after. People's conversion to Christianity, most say, was the end of the traditional way of life and the beginning of their modernity. At the same time, most people also say that Auhelawa is the “last village,” behind all others in their progress towards a modernity they see embodied by Western culture. Moreover, they perceive in their everyday life signs that their viability as a community, both physically and socially, is slipping away. The population is increasing, gardening land is more scarce, and what few material improvements to which the community can lay claim in its mission stations are in rapid decline. As one informant said, “We're just going back.” In other words, Auhelawa see their history at least three different ways: as fait accompli, as catching up, and as sliding backward. I argue that rather than being a contradiction, these three temporalities are interdependent and, furthermore, the perception of decline mediates the dissonance between their preferred view of themselves as having been redeemed by religious conversion and their recognition they are still separated from the standard bearers of Christian modernity in the West. It brings this disjuncture into coordination with contradictions between individual and group, and nature and culture, which themselves derive from a Christian ideology of individualism.

Postcolonial Ecologies: Landscapes of Marginality, Decline, and Degradation from Papua New Guinea and Elsewhere
Jerry Jacka

Abstract: Decades and even centuries of colonialism and underdevelopment have often radically altered social relationships and environmental landscapes in former colonial countries through export-oriented resource extraction and primary commodity production. After independence, many of these former colonies have relied on these very same processes as the basis of economic growth. This paper argues that these “postcolonial ecologies” create landscapes of marginality through which people critique broader narratives of the discourse of modernization and the materiality of global inequalities. Based on research around the Porgera Gold Mine in highlands Papua New Guinea, I explore how the promises of development, which have brought some social and economic improvements, have nevertheless resulted in a situation in which both society and the environment are perceived as being in a state of decline. I advance the claim that this is not due merely to social inequities and environmental degradation resulting from mining development, but also comes from the ways that postcolonial economics reworks sociality and spatiality in this society. Comparative data from other sources are also brought to bear on the argument in order to understand the historically contingent and culturally specific ways that these processes operate in certain areas of the world.

Where New Guinea Fits in a ‘Conserved’ Asian Landscape: The Fate of The Crater Mountain Wildlife Management Area
Paige West

Abstract: Papua New Guinea’s Crater Mountain Wildlife Management Area, a conservation-as-development project that began in the late 1970s, effectively ceased to exist in March of 2005. This paper examines its decline through an analysis of the confluence of mining exploration, oil and natural gas exploration, unfulfilled promises made to local landholders by conservation-related actors, unrealistic demands on the part of local people, and an act of unspeakable violence. The paper locates the decline within the larger political ecology of regional conservation projects in which Papua New Guinea and its biological diversity are placed in competition for scarce resources with China, Burma, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Russia.

After Modern: Decline at Nomad Station, Papua New Guinea
Bruce Knauft

Abstract: By 1998, Gebusi near Nomad River Station, Western Province, Papua New Guinea, had given up many longstanding customs and embraced schooling, church, field sports, market, store business, and government projects. By early 2008, however, the 3-building school was closed, government houses were shut, the health clinic had scant medicine and just one nurse, the market was desultory, the government generator was idle, the station radio was broken, and the ballfield was overgrown with long grass. The airstrip had been closed for nine months and Nomad officials, still being paid, had moved to the town of Kiunga. Gebusi said simply, gamani golomda, “The government has died.” Rather then eschewing agency, Gebusi have rejuvenated many customary practices (kogwayay), including costumed dances, initiations, longhouse-building, male joking, collective bamboo pipe-smoking, drinking kava, finger-snapping etiquette, and large-scale male socializing. They also have increased agency in their local Catholic church. Marriage and coresidence have intensified, and the population has grown 38% in ten years. The long-marginalized Gebusi are increasingly prominent in their local context despite and even because of government decline. They do not reproduce their past but draw upon it and remaining external resources in new ways. At larger issue is how the undoing and demise of local modernity opens new possibilities for social response and cultural change. Gebusi and groups like them are actively “after-modern” in ways that are culturally disjunctive and anthropologically poignant if not radical with respect to received Western notions of development, on the one hand, and postmodernity, on the other.

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Agriculture, Conservation and Mining: transforming human-environment relations along the Upper Bulolo, Papua New Guinea
Jamon Halvaksz
Session Title: Human-Environmental Relations and Development Regimes: Case Studies in Conflict and Commoditization
Session Time: 10:15 AM - 12:00 PM

Abstract: Comparing agricultural data collected from two neighboring Biangai villages (Morobe Province), one engaged in a small-scale conservation effort and the other stakeholders in a large industrial gold mine, this paper analyzes the linkages between alternative development regimes, agricultural transformation and human-environmental relations. While documenting degrees of difference in subsistence and cash crop production, more dramatic distinctions are noted in how community members ‘work the land’. Working the land is not simply about production, but also about knowing the landscape and its products as nodes in human social relations. Biangai conceptualize garden spaces as intimate markers of contemporary sociality and working them collectively affirms both kinship and relationships with the things and places of ‘nature’. Mining and conservation regimes in disentangle these multi-species networks experienced in the garden, and reassemble them into other spaces. Thus, in transforming agricultural practices, Biangai are also transforming how they experience their own multi-species community – its past, present and future. Particular attention is given to the impact that such transformations will have on land tenure, gendered relations and broader human-environment interactions. The paper also documents efforts by the mining company and the author to engage these emerging dilemmas of development. Company interventions into Biangai agricultural practices emphasized small-scale cash cropping and the establishment of permanent land rights through fruit and coffee trees. In spite of their best intentions, company efforts foster a kind of forgetting, where the multiple and fluid networks of land, its products and humans are lost and production is commodified.

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Gwe: A Novel Against Racism; or, Aesthetic Realism Shows Anthropology Is about Yourself
Arnold Perey
Session Title: The Arts and Aesthetics of Race Making
Session Time: 10:15 AM - 12:00 PM

Abstract: Containing selections from Gwe: A Novel Against Racism and illustrated by the author’s photographs, this paper explains how the philosophy Aesthetic Realism, founded by the great American scholar Eli Siegel, provides a method by which anthropologists can comprehend the deepest feelings of the people who live in the societies we study. The purpose of the novel Gwe is to vividly convey a picture of those feelings in a New Guinea people—and their relation to oneself—to the reading public. And thus to oppose racism by having the reader see, “The feelings of people different from me are as real as my own and deserve my utmost respect.” Based on extensive research (see, e.g., Perey: Oksapmin Society and World View, doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, 1973), the novel Gwe enables one to see how the Mengti people, like ourselves, are concerned every day with the conflicting opposites on which every culture is based. These include for and against, togetherness and separation, anger and pleasure, respect and contempt, and self and world. The culture, people, and events in the novel—and in the doctoral thesis providing its documentation—are understood through this central principle of Aesthetic Realism, stated by Eli Siegel: “The world, art, and self explain each other: each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites.” In diverse works since 1971 the author has shown how this principle provides a new basis for anthropology which is accurate, ethical, and honors alike the individuality of the anthropologist and his or her tribal friends.

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Sea turtles: 3000 years of reverence
Regina Luna
Session Title: Animal Subjects: Exploring the Shifting Ground of Human/Animal Relationships
Session Time: 10:15 AM - 12:00 PM

Abstract: A review of the literature shows that the idea of the sea turtle as significant and important, an organism regarded as having great value, began shortly after the initial occupation of the Pacific islands. Human contact resulted in the decimation of turtle populations across the Pacific and it has been theorized that shortly thereafter, cultural practices were put into place that acted to protect sea turtles from the activities that led to that decimation. These practices were manifested and displayed through mythology, legends, folklore, ceremonies, and rituals as well as through the development of various taboos (tapus, kapus) that demonstrated a ‘cultural valuation’?? that elevated the sea turtle above other food sources. Many of the practices were related to religious beliefs and sea turtles were often considered gods and associated with supernatural events. These practices may have begun for any number of reasons, but the result was often conservation of turtle species and elevation of the sea turtle’s significance and value to the culture involved. As more and more Pacific Islanders begin to pressure resource managers for a ‘cultural take’ of sea turtles, knowledge about how exactly these cultures interacted with sea turtles becomes vital to conservation efforts in the region. "Without understanding the human-turtle relationship, no turtle conservation can be effective no matter how much ‘good science’ it relies on" (Frazier 2006).

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Social relationships and cultural learning in Fijian house-building
Michelle Kline
Session Title: Human Behavior in Evolutionary Perspective
Session Time: 10:15 AM - 12:00 PM

Abstract: How do social relationships create social networks and social group boundaries, and how do these social structures influence the cultural learning strategies of individual actors? Further, how do such factors affect the spatial and temporal distribution of variation in material culture? This last question is of particular importance to the archaeological study of material culture and social organization. I address these questions with data on social networks and traditionally-built homes on Yasawa Island, Fiji. This talk will discuss two alternative hypotheses: (1) that close social relationships determine pathways of cultural transmission, and (2) that opportunities for cultural learning shape such affiliative relationships. This study begins to shed light on our understanding of historical cultural change as it is intertwined with individual psychology and social relationships in the Pacific Islands, as well as adding ethnographic depth and a degree of validity to previously abstract mathematical models of cultural change as an historical process.

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The breeze of a place: invisible landscapes of identity
Susanne Kuehling
Session Title: Contact Zones: Researching, Theorizing and Writing Landscape Ethnography
Session Time: 10:15 AM - 12:00 PM

Abstract: The need to put ‘place into motion’ can be catered for by exploring the invisible dimension of space. Local versions of emplacedness in Oceania call for a perspective that accommodates a relational world view. Identity builds on the total experiences of spatial existence that are based on practice and incorporates meanings that are be carried by the air, the all-encompassing and ubiquitous breeze. As ‘invisible luggage’, migrants carry along their ‘home’, as scents and sensations connect them with places, persons, and spirits by triggering memories and emotions.

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“A Pacific cruise collection”: negotiating aesthetics and ethnography aboard the Korrigane 1934-1936 and its influence on French public collections. Hubert Bastide
Session Title: Ethnographic Collecting - The Stories Continue
Session Time: 01:45 PM - 05:30 PM

Abstract: The Quai Branly Museum opened in Paris in 2006 as an attempt to merge the categories of artefacts and art objects. This mode of display is not new; it is a product of the practices of ethnographic collecting and display in France. It reflects an epistemological tension in French anthropology: between art and anthropology, private initiatives and scientific circles. The circumnavigation of the ship Korrigane, 1934-1936, was a cruise undertaken by five people of wealth. The journey resembled more a luxury cruise than an ethnographic expedition. However, 2,500 objects were collected throughout the Pacific together with 6,000 photographs. Detailed accounts were deposited in the Musée de l’Homme in Paris and a travel book was published after the journey. As a private initiative with scientific approval, the journey of the Korrigane holds an ambiguous and fluctuating status that exemplifies French modes of collecting. The material brought back made up the first exhibition at the opening of the Musée de l’Homme in 1938. The objects have now been incorporated into the collection of the Musée du Quai Branly and 15 are exhibited permanently. This paper explores the multiple negotiations operated by the “korrigans” during the cruise; constantly going between luxurious holiday resorts, antique galleries and week-long explorations and field collections. Their perception of the places they visited was informed by popular imagery, caught between paradise and wilderness. They brought this understanding back to the museum. It has influenced the French public ethnographic collections and their display up to the present.

11/22/2008

Marine protected areas: Emerging issues in collaboration, inclusion, and engagement in marine resource governance
Session Time: 08:00 AM - 09:45 AM
Organizer: Courtney Carothers
Co-Organizer(s): Arielle Levine

Abstract: Globally, scientists and conservationists are increasingly acknowledging the need for improved protection of marine environments. Despite international and interdisciplinary consensus regarding the need for increased marine management, the diverse range of institutions, agencies, and stakeholders involved in these efforts are far from agreement on how improvements in marine protection should be accomplished. Processes of marine enclosure are rapidly emerging as a primary response for conserving resources and habitats in the world’s oceans and seas (Agardy et. al., 2003). Over the past decade, numerous international, national, and local-level initiatives and programs have promoted marine protected areas (MPAs) as an effective method to achieve long-term conservation of biodiversity, enhance the sustainable use of marine resources, and empower local communities. While an increasing set of global actors are vigorously promoting MPAs, there is still considerable debate about this shift in ocean governance, particularly concerning the role of people living near, and often reliant on, these protected areas. Many new experiments are currently underway to work with local communities around MPAs, often incorporating techniques piloted in terrestrial community-based conservation programs. This provides a tremendous opportunity to establish new methods of inclusion, collaboration, and engagement of local communities and diverse stakeholders in MPA management, learning from the mistakes and lessons of past terrestrial endeavors. However, establishing protected areas in marine environments brings new issues and challenges, and the social, institutional, technological, and information systems used in land-based conservation strategies are not as developed for marine ecosystems and marine dependent communities (Sloan 2002). Marine conservation faces additional challenges in that user groups are often diffuse and hard to define as traditional “communities,” marine resources are difficult to monitor, and aquatic borders are difficult to demarcate and enforce. While terrestrial conservation generally focuses on involving local residents, fisheries resources are often used by people who come from great distances, use multiple areas, and local “resident” communities may not exist (Levine 2007). The exclusive involvement of nearby communities may overlook the influence and importance of other key resource users, or certain interests group may have a greater ability to influence policy, disenfranchising key stakeholders in the marine management process. Although land expropriation is rare in the establishment of MPAs, the creation of protected areas that are off-limits to fishing creates the potential for a wide range of marine-dependent communities to lose access to a resource base that is critical for economic, subsistence, or cultural purposes. This panel will examine MPAs from an anthropological perspective, looking at emerging issues in collaboration, inclusion, and engagement of stakeholders in marine governance from both a human and institutional perspective. Both national and international case studies will be considered. Of particular interest are the new spaces for participation that have opened in the national and international debates around MPAs.

Demographic and Ethnographic Analyses of MPAs on Opposite Edges of the Pacific
Karma Norman

Abstract: Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) increasingly include local communities in management practices on a global level. These inclusive policies look radically different in the Torres Strait and the US West Coast. On the US coast, restricted access is shaped by a dearth of demographic considerations at the institutional level. The political and social substrates on the islands of Australia’s Torres Strait are markedly different from those of the US coast. Both are home to Marine Protected Area (MPA) initiatives which alter the nature of the marine harvest for adjacent communities. In the Torres Strait, some protected areas are designed for traditional, culturally esteemed catch practices. Delineated areas include a protected zone which is specifically designated for harvests and trade with neighboring communities. Local communities can advocate autonomy and control over adjacent waters in defiance of the Australian state. This would invert the initial exclusionary vision that marine policy-makers have developed for MPAs elsewhere. On the US Coast, however, autonomy aspirations are not feasible. US fishing communities are compelled to participate in the MPA process. As such, social and ethnographic analyses suggest that demographic and cultural characteristics are related to a community’s integration of an MPA. In juxtaposing these two Pacific areas, and examining MPAs in each, we may view the significance of detailed social analyses to notions of exclusion and inclusion in their respective processes. The capacity for affected communities to endorse the transformation in marine access prescribed in MPAs is connected to extant ethnographic realities, demographics and demographic transitions.

Indigenous Peoples, NGOs, and “Good Governance” in the Establishment of Community-Based Marine Protected Areas: Lessons from Southern Fiji
Mark Calamia

Abstract: In the last decade considerable attention has been given in the South Pacific to addressing the biophysical and socioeconomic dimensions of community-based marine protected areas (CBMPAs). However, only recently has serious attention been given to the importance of “good governance” in the context of community conservation areas where biodiversity and adequate fish protein sources are of concern. Using ethnographic data collected form southern Fiji in 2006 and 2007, I will present a case study involving a small NGO and new issues of governance in the establishment of a small-scale, indigenous, community-based marine conservation area. I will employ the IUCN Protected Area Matrix as a classification system comprising management category by governance type to examine the CBMPA of Yanuca village, Fiji and the process by which it was established. Key issues of governance, participation , equity, and benefit sharing are considered in the achievement of the CBMPA objectives of effectiveness, equity, viability, and sustainability. The extent to which these objectives have been met through the recent partnership of Yancua village with their partner NGO will be discussed in the context of local governance for long-term resource conservation and cultural sustainability.

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Social Relationships and Digital Relationships: Rethinking the Database at the Vanuatu Cultural Centre

Haidy Geismar

Session Title: After Collaboration: Indigenous Ontologies, Mediation, Museum Practice
Session Time: 01:45 PM - 03:30 PM

Abstract: In recent years, there has been growing investigation into the ‘relational’ nature of museum collections and archives. Projects such as the Pitt Rivers’ Relational Museum (http://history.prm.ox.ac.uk), use relational database management systems to both give form to their work, and to provide a visual metaphor for understanding the complex networks of social connection inculcated by museum collecting and archiving. In this paper, we seek to unravel and interrogate the connection between "digital" and "social" ontologies within the museum and beyond, using as a case-study the generation of an integrated database for the Vanuatu National Museum and Cultural Centre. Uniting and digitising the VCC archives – including the National Photo, Film and Sound Archive; Vanuatu National Heritage Register, Vanuatu National Library, National Language Committee, National Museum, Traditional Resource Knowledge, Women’s Culture and Sand drawing projects – the VCC database both draws relationships of knowledge, practice and collection into view and generates new connections in a tri-lingual space. We ask, what are the implications of mapping the social onto the digital and vice versa? How is this mapping culturally located? What is the efficacy of global digital connectivity on local museum practices, and other social networks? How do digital relationships affect the production of new collections and new relations to the object world? How does this electronic infrastructure generate or perpetuate hierarchies of knowledge and the political economy of information?

11/23/2008

Sustainable Mining Stuart Kirsch
Session Title: Corporate Oxymorons: Entry Points into the Ethnography of Capitalism
Session Time: 10:15 AM - 12:00 PM

Abstract: From the recognition that mining is inherently unsustainable, leaving behind ruined environments, the industry now promotes itself as practicing “sustainable mining.” This claim depends on “the emptying out” of the ecological aspect of the definition of sustainability. Instead, the mining industry argues that revenue from mining can be used to support a variety of development projects that will continue to benefit local communities even after mine closure. This paper examines how the corporate oxymoron “sustainable mining” has been legitimated. It tracks the way that sustainability was coined as a hybrid term linking science and society, and has been progressively redefined in a series of multilateral meetings. It pays particular attention to the role of capital in promoting notions of “weak sustainability” that effectively license widespread environmental degradation in return for the support of a limited conservation agenda. The paper also draws general conclusions about the relationship between capital and its critics, notably how capital appropriates the discourse of its critics to neutralize their critique.

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Rising Sea-Levels, Kingtides and the Modern Subject: Local Dialogue on an Environmental Crisis in Coastal Papua New Guinea David Lipset
Session Title: Environmental Subjects and Environmental Activism: Shifting Contexts in an Age of Environmentality
Session Time: 10:15 AM - 12:00 PM

Abstract: If the contingency of the tragic, modern subject is based in its self-presence, its bounded dissociation from the other, through possessive individualism and agency, the ongoing construction of a unique, biographical narrative, and a concept of indeterminate causation, it is also de-coupled from totemic or participatory concepts of nature through rational knowledge, e.g., the IPCC, the Garnault Report, HIV and so forth. In 2008, the coastal sandbanks on which the Murik Lakes people reside in the Sepik River estuary are being submerged by rising sea-levels and kingtides, which circumstance, while devastating, is not understood as never having happened before, according to ethnohistory. But the state wants to intervene and relocate villages inland. In response, the people do not agree about the meaning or resolution of their predicament. Their views range from melting polar ice, seasonal tidal cycles to sorcery to just not knowing. At the same time, some express suspicions about the state’s motivations in offering to relocate their settlements and others reject the prospect in favor of that which pleases them and what they know how to do and manage, namely, their adaptation of aquatic foraging, articulated as it has become with petty capitalism. In this paper, I discuss how responses to this environmental crisis have not simply advanced the kind of lonely, isolating subjectivity of self-presence mentioned above but have rather constituted a point of dialogical tension at which ‘the Murik subject’ may be overheard both as part of, yet separate from, modernity.

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Beer, Gold, and God: Drinking and the Morality of Failed Development in the Morobe Goldfields of
Papua New Guinea

Daniele Moretti

Session Title: The sociality of drinking: Cross-cultural perspectives on alcohol and personhood
Session Time: 08:00 AM - 11:45 AM

Abstract: Drinking is an intrinsic part of life in the Morobe Goldfields of Papua New Guinea. On regular pay days or when they strike a rich gold find locals keep buying beer for themselves and others until they run out of money. As they require the expenditure of considerable wealth, these long drinking sessions are valued expressions of one’s productive efficacy. More than this, they show one’s “moral capacity” to reciprocate the drinks, money, and support received from other miners. But if the flow of alcohol is an essential part of the local flow of relationships and how persons emerge as efficacious moral agents, the miners also construe it as a sign of their own “moral weakness” and a central trope with which to explain their failure to use their gold towards “sustainable development.” This paper argues that local discourses of failed development blame drinking not just for causing selfish and violent behaviour within the mining community and “wasting” money that could be spent to improve local services, infrastructure, mining operations, and alternative businesses, but also for threatening human relations with God and the local spirits of the land who, displeased with the improper behaviour fuelled by alcohol consumption, are causing local gold deposits to shrink in size or disappear altogether. In turn, this suggests that drinking is seen not only as a socio-economic issue but also as a moral failing that threatens those all-important spiritual relationships between land and people that are fundamental to Melanesian models of agency and personhood.

AAA News - Business Meeting and Sponsored Session Cultures of Christian Conversion

2008-08-31T13:45:00.000-07:00

The Melanesian Interest Group (MIG) business meeting will be held on Friday the 21st of November from 6 - 7.30 pm in a location to be announced in the San Francisco Hilton and Towers.We will be discussing the topic for the next AAA sponsored session and receiving nominations for the next convener-elect.

Please let Jamon or myself know if you would like to raise any issues for the meeting.

In anticipation of people registering for the AAA and renewing their AAA membership - we kindly ask that you tick off (or write in) your belonging to the MIG. This way we can continue to have a presence in the AAA.

The MIG invited session, co-sponsored by the AAA Executive Program Committee, for 2008 is entitled The Cultures of Christian Conversion. Organised and chaired by John Barker (UBC) the session will take place on Sunday 23 November from 8 to 11.45am. Dan Jorgenson (UWO) and Rita S. Kipp (Kenyon) will be discussants for what promises to be an excellent session.

The Cultures of Christian Conversion

The expansion of Christianity across the globe over the past two centuries constitutes one of the most remarkable cultural transformations in the history of humanity. Most secular historians and anthropologists long understood that expansion as a reflex of political and economic imperialism. When considered at all, conversion appeared largely as the religious expression of a process of colonial incorporation and, more generally, the transition from “traditional” to “modern” forms of society. Over the past thirty years, anthropologists have played a significant part in revolutionizing this conception through fine-grained studies of both missionaries and converts across the globe. Not only has this significantly elevated the subject of Christian expansion amongst students of colonial and post-colonial societies, it has greatly complicated the former consensus on the reasons and implications of Christian conversion. In particular, the focus upon diversity within mission organizations and the exercise of agency on the part of converts as they interpret, appropriate, and otherwise “localize” mission Christianity—these and related factors have tended to obscure or displace conversion as a central organizing theme. Our main purpose in this session is to bring conversion back into the discussion, particularly of the types of local “christianities” typically studied by anthropologists. Through a variety of case studies stretching from the Arctic to the tropics and from Amazonia to Melanesia, we ask whether the concept of conversion can provide a useful framework for comparison and, if so, what are the best ways to construct or construe it.

John Barker (UBC)
Modeling Christian Conversion in Melanesia

Drawing upon case studies from Melanesia, this paper contrasts four powerful models of religious conversion in the anthropological literature: (1) as a colonization of consciousness (Comaroff and Comaroff); (2) as the acquisition of a new locus of self-identity (Hefner); (3) as a transformation in morally defining values (Robbins); and (4) as a shift in semantic ideologies (Keane). Rather than considering these as alternatives, I suggest that they are best thought of as facets of a single complex process of confrontation and transformation. The degree to which one or another appears to characterize the experience of conversion in a locality depends, among other things, upon the ways missionaries and converts conceive of redemption, upon indigenous orientations to history, and upon the degree and nature of incorporation of local communities into wider social systems. The time factor also greatly complicates our perceptions of conversion. Changes brought about by acceptance of Christianity may appear to anthropologists as far more radical in newly converted communities as opposed to those where churches have formed part of the social landscape for generations.

Robert L. Welsch (Franklin Pearce)
Is It Conversion?: Religious Tensions after the Aitape Tsunami of 1998.

SVD Catholic missionaries arrived in the Aitape region of Papua New Guinea in 1896 and by 1920s had converted nearly everyone along the coast and offshore islands. After WWII the Franciscans took charge of this mission field and Catholicism was unambiguously the dominant church in the area until the 1980s. By 1990 missionaries from other churches had begun working in the district and in most communities the Assembly of God was beginning to make inroads, challenging the entrenched Catholic church. Then in July 1998 a tsunami with 45-foot waves destroyed four communities, killing 2200 people. Many NGOs—including a number of religious organizations—rushed to the region to help rebuild these communities. Two years after the disaster most of the communities were beginning to recover. This paper examines what was happening in Arop, one of these communities, where eleven different churches were operating where two years earlier there was only the Catholic church and two competing protestant groups. Why this sudden interest in non-Catholic churches in an area that had been devoutly Catholic since 1920? Some of these churches had only one or two families, while others were thriving religious organizations with hundreds of members. Nearly all of the new churches had sprung up at the expense of the Catholic church. But while some of the members of the smaller churches had clearly done so because they were promised funding and building materials, in other cases it seems that villagers were making sense of the tsunami through religious conversion.

Courtney Handman (Chicago)
Denominational CONVERSION in Christian histories: continuities and gaps in serial conversion among the Guhu-Samane, Papua New Guinea

The objects of study of much work in the growing field of the anthropology of Christianity are groups of people who are trying to sort out their relationship to Christianity while they are also practicing it at the same time. For these groups and for the anthropologists who write about them, the meat of the problem is not in getting to conversion, but in trying to live as Christians in the moments after they have taken the plunge into this new kind of affiliation. However, being committed to Christianity does not mean that an interest in conversion is necessarily over. This is especially true for many Guhu-Samane people, a Papua New Guinean group that has been engaging with Christianity for about 100 years. Guhu-Samane are working their way through Christianity by working their way through denominations, for them institutionalized experiments and reforms of Christian churches. Each new denomination that one becomes a member of requires a new baptism and conversion. But at least for members of one very prominent church, the kind of conversion narrative one tells is not so much a story of the process of coming to take on a Christian identity, but of proving that one has been a stalwart Christian throughout a series of apparent denominational changes. Conversion is, in that sense, about being Christian, rather than about becoming Christian. Looked at in this light, inter-denominational conversion becomes a part of local Christianity, rather than its precursor.

Laurie Zadnik (Toronto)
Maintaining Beliefs and Values, Changing Lives: Stories of Becoming Mormon in Madang, Papua New Guinea

Research on the relatively recent spread of Mormonism in Papua New Guinea highlights an interesting paradox. My informants would explicitly reject the use of idioms of conversion to explain their “joining” (their preferred expression) the Mormon Church. Many informants found the idiom of conversion so distasteful that not only would they avoid using the term themselves, but they would also correct my wording if I used such related terms or phrases. Yet these same informants would typically go to great lengths to emphasize dramatic changes in their lives since having become members of this particular denomination. How should this seemingly contradictory emphasis on life-altering change and explicit rejection of the concept of conversion be handled? Does this belie the possibility of using conversion as an analytical construct to understand these particular processes in their lives? This paper discusses the particular meanings these Mormon Church members attributed to “conversion” which for them served as the basis for its rejection. These informants rejected conversion as an idiom because they felt it depicted an abandonment of prior beliefs and values which they viewed themselves as continuing and/or strengthening by participating in Mormon Church activities. This case example shows that it is important to deal with transformation and continuity simultaneously when the significant transformations we seek to understand and explain ultimately arise because of the values and beliefs that people seek to maintain or uphold.

Sandra Widmer (York)
Politicizing Subjects, Contesting Therapies: Christian Conversion and the Struggle for Health, Souls and Meaning in Vanuatu

Following violence after a woman’s death and sorcery accusations in Port Vila in early 2007, J. Issac, wrote a letter to the editor in the Vanuatu Daily Post. “People must put their trust in the hospital. Together we can stop problems from the past so that they don’t happen any more and people can live with trust, respect and harmony. We must stop talking about black magic, it doesn’t have meaning. We can’t go back to 1700 or 1800. Christianity is today and the right arm of Christianity is the hospital.” For over a century, the use of sorcery has been a source of consternation for a variety of reasons. For the Presbyterian missionaries, it symbolized a subject’s unstable conversion to Christianity. Using contemporary and archival material, I discuss what debates over sorcery and the cause of death reveal about Christian forms of subjectivity and conversion. I argue they show what Asad identifies as the politicization of consciousness and the centrality of that consciousness for modern Christian subjects. The conversion process compels subjects to view their options for living as ethical choices. The way this aspect of Christianity has been taken up in ni-Vanuatu experience of modern subjectivity means that ni-Vanuatu are compelled into a reified awareness of their “culture” as something that they can have a politicized relationship with. Like Robbins, I examine how Christianity, in the process of conversion and the formation of new subjects, compels a moralized awareness of personal and cultural lives.

Kun-hui Ku (National Tsing Hua University)
Continuity or Discontinuity: Religious Processes embedded in Christian conversion movements among Austroneisan Paiwan in Taiwan

The literature on anthropological studies of Christian conversion movements has hinged on two divided camps: first, emphasis on the continuity with traditional cosmology in the face of Christian appearance, and second, strong emphasis on the rupture from the past and the new life. This paper intends to examine the multiple narratives from the first generation Paiwan converts and second generation converts to consider how converts' conceptions of "tradition" and Christianity gradually shift over time. The mass conversion to Christianity among the indigenous peoples of Taiwan after War World II, "The Twentieth Century Miracle," as it was called by Canadian Presbyterian missionaries to Taiwan then, was characterized as "people's movement without missionaries." Indigenous evangelists were trained to send messages to remote parts of the island and the translation of Bible was the urging yet time-consuming task that could not catch up with the speed of conversion. Within twenty years, 80 percent of indigenous population claimed to be Christians, either Presbyterian or Catholics. This paper will rethink how the concept of conversion can enhance or hinder our understanding of the long term processes.

Yannick Fer (CNRS)
Culture as an individual freedom? The ambiguities of cultural “new birth” in Charismatic Protestantism in Polynesia

From its origin, the history of Protestantism in Polynesia has been influenced by missionaries’ will to domesticate indigenous bodies, especially female bodies, in order to contain the impulses of a “pagan nature” that seemed to lead Polynesians to idleness and lasciviousness. Conversion thus implied turning away from some cultural expressions such as traditional dance forms. The subsequent integration of Christianity as a contemporary pillar of a Polynesian “tradition” on the one hand, and the rise of contextual Oceania theologies on the other hand contributed to an evolution in the relationship between Christianity and local cultures. Reformulated in Christian terms, these cultures became viewed in many places as the way to a collective salvation. This inspired anti-colonial struggles: a duty to be fully Polynesians in order to be as God wants us. Recently arrived Charismatic Protestantism and more specifically networks like Island Breeze (YWAM) today challenge this “Christian tradition”. Influenced by the touristic displays of Polynesian cultures and an Evangelical credo based on both the individualization of salvation and the rejection of any secular/religious distinction, these networks tend to reverse the perspective: they redeem the body by claiming dances as a mean to express the Christian faith and opposing the “traditional” Puritanism inherited from the early missionaries. They offer the younger generations – especially those born in migrant communities in places like New Zealand – a “double conversion”, both religious and cultural, through a voluntary re-appropriation of Polynesian identities understood as a matter of personal choice and individual freedom.

Aparecida Vilaça (Museu National, Rido De Janeiro)
The Bible as read by the Wari' (Rondônia, Brazil)

Across the world, the learning of reading skills by native peoples has been enabled by the work of missionaries, whose own aim has been to provide the former with access to the Bible or religious teachings. Even today, the Bible is identified by ethnographers as the primary text of interest for many literate native peoples, although most have access to a wide range of alternative reading material, including school books and documentation of their ‘culture.’ Ethnographers typically report that only the Bible is read outside of the school context, whether in Christian religious services or in the context of day-to-day family relations. My aim in this paper is to consider this phenomenon on the basis of my ethnography of the Wari’, a group speaking a language of the Txapakura family, living in the southwest of Amazonia. Taught to read and write since the 1960s by fundamentalist Protestant missionaries from the New Tribes Mission, and included in the Brazilian school education system since the 1980s, the Wari’ display the same disinterest for all reading matter apart from the Bible (and the exegeses of Biblical sources produced by the missionaries), which is read out loud, either at home by parents to their children, or in the Church services by native pastors. Based on an analysis of the contexts and forms of reading the Bible and related texts, I look to comprehend the reasons for the Wari’ interest in this specific reading material. What does reading the Bible mean to them? What is revealed to them by the words they can read? What social relations are established through this reading?

Aristoteles Barcelos Neto (UEA)
Touching God in the Peruvian Andes: senses, images and the conflicts over re-conversion

This paper aims to analyze Andean thoughts and practices towards the embodiments of divinities and how these bodies are sensorially perceived and experienced. In the Peruvian Andes there are at least four highly miraculous giant stones, which are fully recognized as embodiments of Christ. Looking at the anthropological history of the Andes, one might suppose that these stone Christs are the ancient lithomorphosis of the ancestors (Duviols, 1977) deeply re-signified. These re-significations seem to be a contingent response to the “extirpation of idolatries”, a response that in Wagner terms (1981) should be seen as a counter-invention of Spanish Christianity. Andeans travel large distances and up to 5000 meters above sea level to see and touch these stone Christs. Seeing and touching are exceptional spiritual experiences that put Eucharist aside. In certain rituals, the message is clear: the body of Christ is to be touched not to be eaten. Other important aspect of the cult of seeing and touching is art restoration. Following worshipers statements, an outstanding restoration inspires faith and consequently empowers the ancient image. The second aim of this paper is to discuss the ongoing Catholic missionary effort to reshape Andean (Indian) Christianity within contemporary Roman orthodoxy. This new mission, which is a kind of re-conversion of Andeans to Catholicism, is a fertile ground to discus the religious nature of Andean socialities and the conflicts between the “religion of the images” (animist/multinaturalist) and the “religion of the text” (i.e. post Vatican Council).

Andrew Orta (Urbana-Champaign)
Vulgar Citizenship: Conversion, Local Christianity and the Repertoires of Neoliberalism

Christian conversion entails a reorientation of processes of selfhood, entangling the production of local frames of social life with encompassing networks of meaning and action. As a process at once local and global, one profoundly micro-level and universal, conversion collapses and cuts across multiple scales of phenomena. In this regard, the comparative ethnography of Christian conversion can be a powerful starting point for the description and analysis of other regimes of transformation and alignment. This paper examines a case from the Andean highlands, where the repertoires of local Christianity intersect with a remaking of the texture of civic life through processes of administrative decentralization provoked by globally operative ideals of neoliberal governance.

Frédéric Laugrand (Université Laval)
From Fidji to Nunavut: Conversion and Healing the Land in Inuit Pentecostal and Evangelical movements

This paper deals with the rapid development of Pentecostal and Evangelical movements in the Canadian Eastern Arctic. Using traditional ethnographical material, interviews with elders conducted in the past ten years as well as information and photographs collected in the internet, I first present and contextualize the various movements and analyze how they conceive Christian conversion. Then I examine the case of the healing the land rituals developed by the Canada Awakening Ministries with the collaboration of a group from Fiji. The healing rituals conducted in Baffin Island and in the Kivalliq communities evoke traditional rituals as well as Western traditions. Rituals of cleansing the land appear to already have existed before the coming of Christianity. Finally, I explore how these movements claim to introduce discontinuity with the past as well as new forms of solidarity integrating modern ideologies in a Christian perspective but that the relation to land as well as connections to shamanism remains central issues in modern Inuit discourses and practices of Pentecostalism. Therefore although all these religious movements are quite modern, they combine old and new features in a variety of ways. They provide a recognizable idiom that allows for the transition to a modern political structure. In their emphasis on global relationships they connect Inuit to Fijians testifying to a new order of mobility where all nations meet in the context of this new transcendent order.

Two New Exhibits at the National Gallery of Australia

2008-08-28T20:58:00.000-07:00

The National Gallery of Australia is currently running an exhibit entitled Picture Paradise: Asia-Pacific Photography 1840s-1940s (11 July - 9 Nov. 2008) and will be showing Gods, ghosts and men: Pacific arts from the National Gallery of Australia (10 Oct. 2008 - 11 January 2009). Thanks are owed to Robin Hide for bringing the latter to my attention.

While it is unclear if any photographs of Melanesian communities are included in the show, Picture Paradise is notable for its broad comparative perspective. As the website relates:

This is the first exhibition to survey the history of photography of our region – from India and Sri Lanka, Southeast and East Asia, Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands to the west coast of North America. It features pioneer local photographers as well as Europeans working in the region. The exhibition reveals the rich heritage and the many outstanding achievements of the first century of photography in the Asia–Pacific region.

This significant gathering of over four hundred original photographs and albums includes gem-like daguerreotype portraits, mass-produced views and portraits on paper made possible by the revolutionary wet-plate and dry-plate glass negative-positive process, and prints from the modern era of small format film cameras and photojournalism.

Picture Paradise presents works from seventeen public and private collections in Australia, Europe, New Zealand and the United States of America, many never previously loaned or exhibited. The majority of these works are from the National Gallery of Australia’s extensive photography collection and include the rarely seen nearly ten-metre-long Holtermann panorama of Sydney Harbour from 1875.

With a nod to the 1965 volume edited by Peter Lawrence and Mervyn J. Meggitt , Gods, ghosts and men: Pacific Arts from the National Gallery of Australia is

the first major exhibition of Pacific Arts to be held in Australia for over twenty years. Embracing the diverse artistic traditions of Polynesia and Melanesia, studying the greatest works of mainly unnamed artists, the exhibition draws upon the world-class Pacific Arts collection of the National Gallery of Australia. Pacific Arts from the NGA collection includes many works that have never been seen by the Australian public.

There are a number of associated lectures (mostly at 12.45 pm), performances, and workshops etc. For fuller details, see http://nga.gov.au/calendar/

The lectures include:

14 Oct. Curator’s perspective, Crispin Howarth

16 Oct. From harakeke to huaki. Dr Patricia Te Arapo Wallace

22 Oct. To collect or not to collect. Dr Barry Craig

25 Oct. Abelam art. Dr Diane Losche

13 Nov. The conservation of plant materials in Pacific arts objects. Sarah McHugh

18 Nov. Concealed knowledge and hidden histories. Crispin Howarth.

2 Dec. Spirits of the sea; art from the Solomon Islands. Kevin Conru

4 Dec. Sacred pigs: ritual and materialised spirits in Vanuatu. Dr Kirk Huffman

6 Dec. A trans-Tasman kahukuri (Maori dog-skin cloak). Keren Ruki

Other Pacific talks etc at the Gallery (at 2.0 pm) include:

7 Sept. First Contact showing introduced by Dr Chris Ballard

12 Oct. Documenting early Fiji: photography in Levuka in the late nineteetnth century. Dr Rod Ewins

18 Oct. Visualising history: dance, film and phosphate in the Pacific. Dr Katerina Teaiwa.

Melanesian Research Seminar (MRS) Series for 2008-09

2008-08-14T13:39:00.000-07:00

I wanted to advertise the listing of seminars for the Melanesian Research Seminar (MRS) for 2008-09. Held at the British Museum, as part of the Melanesian Project (a 5 year AHRC funded project on the Melanesian collections at the BM), the seminar series provides academics and graduate students an opportunity to workshop a paper and place outside of their institutions to interact with others interested in the region. Run since 2006, the seminar series is open to all interested.

As papers are circulated and read before the seminar, please contact Elizabeth Bonsek at the British Museum for further details. Here email can be found on the BM's website.

2008
Oct 2 Ira Bashkow (Virginia)

Nov 7 Anthony Pickles (UCL)

Dec 12 Alice Street (Sussex)

2009
Jan 23 Karen Sykes (Manchester)

Mar 6 Thorgeir Kolshus (University of Oslo)

April 24 Justin Shaffner (Cambridge)

May 22 Liz Bonshek (Melanesia Project)

Jun 26 Tony Crook (St. Andrews)

Talk by Paige West on Crater Mountain Wildlife Management (Pacific Magazine 2008)

2008-08-13T08:02:00.000-07:00

The following article by Tereni Kens appeared in Pacific Magazine (13 August 2008) about a recent talk by Paige West of Barnard and Columbia University in Port Moresby about Crater Mountain Wildlife Management Area and conservation.

Scientist Says 'Research Hot Spot' Can Benefit Villagers
By Tereni Kens in Port Moresby
Wednesday: August 13, 2008

Most of Papua New Guinea’s protected wildlife management areas are described as a sleeping non-extraction pot of gold “research hot-spot” markets. They have the potential to generate thousands of dollars in income on research work alone for the rural landowners from the rich natural biodiversity as compared to eco-tourism.Eco-tourism is widely promoted by the government but the benefits or the economic gains are far less then what it is expected.

Visiting American anthropologist and research scientist Dr. Paige West highlighted this after giving a public lecture yesterday at the U.S Embassy in Port Moresby concerning a crater mountain in Papua New Guinea’s Eastern Highlands Province.

The public lecture "The fate of Crater Mountain: Conservation, Politics, and Change in the Eastern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea" touched on the recent history of the Crater Mountain Wildlife Management Area (CMWMA) and focused on the lessons learned about conservation in PNG from the 2700 sq km wildlife management area.

The lecture in particular focused on the growth of national science and research that has come from the Crater Mountain project and how CMWMA has helped the indigenous people benefited by earning an income for them.

“At Crater Mountain, ecotourism has not been the kind of success that was hoped for by the project architects. What has been a success, in terms of generating income for the rural landowners, has been the marketing of the area as a ‘research hot-spot.’ By this I mean the discursive production of the CMWMA as a place that is understudied scientifically where scientists can come and conduct research through an already existing infrastructure provided by Wildlife Conservation Society-PNG (WCS-PNG),” West said.

In her research, West discovered that over the course of a recent year, between July 2002 and June 2003, a total of 21 people who identified themselves in the village guestbook as scientist passed through the project architect. They brought money to villages where there was not a market for traditional tourism or even ecotourism.

In the case of the villages whose lands make up the Crater Mountain Wildlife Management Area, West noted that over the past 17 years, 512 outsiders have visited the area and brought thousands of dollars to the rural places in terms of payment for access, accommodation and labor.

“These 512 visitors have spent about 29,443 days in the CMWMA and spent over K20 per day, with a total income for CMWMA villages of K475,020 (US$164,094),” she said.

Since its creation, the CMWMA has become one of the most active areas for biological research in the country. There are over 50 peer-reviewed publications based on research in the CMWMA as well as five Ph.D. dissertations, five M.S. theses, and 12 Honours theses.

Conference in Honour of Marilyn Strather - Legal Knowledge and Anthropological Engagement (3-4 October 2008; Newnham College, Cambridge, UK)

2008-08-06T14:34:00.000-07:00

As some of you may have seen the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) and the Cambridge University's Social Anthropology Department are sponsoring a conference in Honour of Marilyn Strathern entitled, Legal Knowledge and Anthropological Engagement (3-4 October 2008) at Newnham College, Cambridge. The deadline for registration is the 26 of September 2008, and the standard fee is £30 and the reduced student fee is £15. Details can be found by clicking on the conference title above.

A summary of the conference and provisional programme are as follows:

'Interpretation', Marilyn Strathern writes in the 2004 preface to Partial Connections, 'must be a matter of refusing many meanings in order to focus on any'. Yet the reaction to excess entails a further insight: there are no discrete units of meaning that would organize the work of interpretation. The scope of Strathern's work is an example of how proliferating meanings (and interests) offer no fixed point of reference. Melanesian senses of the person open up a perspective on new reproductive technologies in the United Kingdom, just as the current regimes of academic auditing recall old questions about property. For the organization of a conference, as for the organization of data, the effect is liberating.

In so far as excess summons up relations, a conference organized in honour of Marilyn Strathern can focus on any one of her interests in order to evoke all of them. The organizers' interest in the interfaces between anthropological and legal knowledge seeks to engage a key question in Strathern's work: how do forms of knowledge come to appear as general or particular in their capacity to contribute to human understanding? Description at the heart of anthropological analysis no longer appears as a source of knowledge that is more particular than, for instance, the contentions of legal theory. Yet the effects of scaling on truth claims remain evident, not least in the persistence of global and local as the conventions by which the proportions of claims are judged. This conference asks, with reference to legal knowledge and practice, how anthropology resists such conventions in its contributions to contemporary debates inside and outside academia.

Modernist legal thinking, as Strathern has observed, at once opens up and closes down the capacity to envisage relations. While law and biotechnology, for example, appear compatible in a way that law and kinship do not, the anthropologist's challenge is often to keep in view the propensity of law to be many things at once. It can be a source of conceptual resources through which people define problems of ownership and rights, it can spur them to intervene in disputes, it gives grounds for advocacy, and so on. The instances of ethnography are accordingly diverse: humanitarianism; international organizations' involvement in 'conflict resolution'; 'law' in Melanesia; and ethics and research governance.

Some contributions to the conference will make their engagement with Strathern's work explicit; in others the intellectual debt may remain unstated. Common to all is the effort, central to Strathern's oeuvre, to accord equal weight to conceptual and interpersonal relations in the descriptions of social life.
Provisional Programme

Friday 3 October

9.30 - 10.00

Registration

10.00 - 10.30

Opening Session

Chair: Mary Jacobus (University of Cambridge)

Alison Richard, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge

10.30 - 11.00

Coffee

11.00-12.00

Keynote Lecture

Annelise Riles (Cornell University):
Title TBA

12.00-13.00

Lunch

13.00-14.00

Transforming Law in Melanesia and Beyond

Chair: Eric Hirsch (Brunel University)

Melissa Demian (University of Kent)
Eliciting the ‘Underlying Law’

Ira Bashkow (University of Virginia)
When Does a Gift Begin?

4.00-14.15

Break

14.15- 15.30

Sandra Bamford (University of Toronto)
Unitary Subjects, Discrepant Bodies: Domestic Violence and the Law in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea

James Leach (University of Aberdeen)
Mama Lo, Intellectual Property Law, Emergence, Constraint, and Personhood

Eric Hirsch (Brunel University)
Introduction to Discussion

15.30-16.00

Discussion

16.00-16.30

Coffee

16.30-17.30

Obligations and Anthropology: Humanitarianism Beyond Human Rights

Chair: Wendy James (University of Oxford)

Harri Englund (University of Cambridge)
Extreme Poverty and Existential Obligations: Beyond Morality in the Anthropology of Africa?

Erica Bornstein (University of Wisconsin)
Accounting for Trust: Obligations in NGO-work in India

17.30-17.45

Break

17.45-19.00

Liisa Malkki (Stanford University)
Toys and Other Gifts: On The Cultivation of the Humanitarian Imagination

Maja Petrovic-Steger (University of Cambridge)
'Humanitarian Health’ in Post-conflict Serbia

Wendy James (University of Oxford)
Introduction to Discussion

19.00-19.30

Discussion

Saturday 4 October

9.00 - 10.00

‘Conflict Resolution’ and the Auditing of Social Relations under International Law
Chair: Jane Cowan (Sussex University)

Yael Navaro-Yashin (University of Cambridge)
Governing Social Relations Internationally: The Legal Management of Conflict

Sari Wastell (Goldsmiths College, London)
Scales of Justice for the Former Yugoslavia: Social and Legal Calibrations of Culpability for Wartime Atrocity

10.00 - 10.15

Break

10.15 - 11.30

Andrew Barry (University of Oxford)
The Curse of Economics: Oil, Conflict and the Law

James Weiner (RSPAS, Australia National University)
Conflict in the Statutory Elicitation of Aboriginal Culture in Australia

Jane Cowan (Sussex University)
Introduction to Discussion

11.30-12.00

Discussion

12.00-13.00

Lunch

13.00-14.00

Rights to Research?: Anthropology, Academia and the New Institutionalism
Chair: Georgina Born (University of Cambridge)

Monica Konrad (University of Cambridge):
Title TBA

Alberto Corsin-Jimenez (University of Manchester):
On Disproportionality

14.00-14.15

Break

14.15-15.30

Debbora Battaglia (Mount Holyoke College)
Warming to Interdisciplinary Flows and Friction: An Anthropologist’s First Contact with the Science of ‘Weird Life’

Don Brenneis (University of California, Santa Cruz)
Optimizing Outliers

Georgina Born (University of Cambridge)
Introduction to Discussion

15.30-16.00

Discussion

16.00-16.30

Coffee

16.30-17.00

Closing Session

Chair: Alan Macfarlane (University of Cambridge)

17.00-18.00

Reception

Seminar Series: The Waigani Seminar (13-15 August 2008, UPNG)

2008-07-18T07:02:00.000-07:00

The Waigani Seminar which ran from 1967-1997 - is to return in a new series in 2008.

Waigani Seminar 2008 - AUGUST 13th-15th 2008 - UPNG Download a poster here

Theme: Living History & Evolving Democracy in Papua New Guinea
Complementary Themes:
- The Constitution and the Law, Land Tenure and Land Values
- Dynamic interaction, bureaucratic inertia, reactive and proactive pathways within the three tiers of government
- Climate Change, global warming and environmental impact upon sovereign waters and lands
- Globalisation and Telecommunication
- The e-Economy: Kina currency; HIV-AIDS health, education and stigmatisation; other human; natural and material resources within the sovereign jurisdiction
Contact: Ms. Dimas Belik, Seminar Secretariat, Waigani Campus (next to MLT)
Tel: (675) 326 7694/174 | Fax: (675) 326 7107 &nbs;| Email: waiganis@upng.ac.

Vanuatu: Chief Roi Mata's Domain Listed as World Heritage Site

2008-07-14T07:41:00.000-07:00

On July 8th, Chief Roi Mata's Domain in Vanuatu was inscribed along with twenty seven other site on the UNESCO's World Heritage List. Two of the other sites were also in Melanesia: Kuk, a 116 hecters of swamp in PNG's southern highlands; and Lagoons of New Caledonia). Chief Roi Mata's Domain is the first site inscribed in Vanuatu and includes the island Artok (where Chief Roi Mata and more than 50 of his community are buried), Mangaas on Efate Island (his site of residence) and the chamber care of Fels on Lelepa Island (where Chief Roi Mata died). It joins the listing of the 'Vanuatu Sand Drawing' which had the distinction of being proclaimed a 'Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity' by UNESCO in 2003. The following is posted on the UNESCO site about the Chief Roi Mata listing:

It consists of three early 17th century AD sites on the islands of Efate, Lelepa and Artok associated with the life and death of the last paramount chief, or Roi Mata, of what is now Central Vanuatu. The property includes Roi Mata’s residence, the site of his death and Roi Mata’s mass burial site. It is closely associated with the oral traditions surrounding the chief and the moral values he espoused. The site reflects the convergence between oral tradition and archaeology and bears witness to the persistence of Roi Mata’s social reforms and conflict resolution, still relevant to the people of the region.

The Vanuatu Cultural Centre (VCC) site has a report prepared by Dr. Meredith Wilson and Dr. Chris Ballard at the Australian National University, which was created in collaboration with communities from Lelepa Island and Mangaliliu Village on Efate Island. They began this report in 2004, and it provides a summary of the nomination process. The report can be viewed as an html document here or downloaded from the VCC site here.

On the ANU website the following press release was posted on the 14th of July:

Forbidden island is first world heritage site in Pacific
The mass grave of a chief on a forbidden island in Vanuatu has been chosen as one of the first cultural sites in the Pacific added to UNESCO’s World Heritage List, thanks in part to the efforts of ANU researchers.

The small offshore island of Artok, where Chief Roi Mata was buried together with more than 50 members of his community, has been protected by traditional prohibitions for four centuries. Also included in the World Heritage property of Chief Roi Mata’s Domain are the sites of Roi Mata’s residence, at Mangaas on Efate Island, and of his death in the large chamber cave of Fels, on Lelepa Island.

Chief Roi Mata’s Domain is the first site in Vanuatu to be granted World Heritage status, and shares the honour of being the first cultural site to be listed from an independent Pacific country with the Kuk Early Agricultural Site in Papua New Guinea.

ANU researchers played a leading role in the successful nomination of Chief Roi Mata’s Domain. In 2004, Dr Meredith Wilson and Dr Chris Ballard of the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies (RSPAS) at ANU were invited by Ralph Regenvanu, Director of Vanuatu’s National Museum and Cultural Centre, to work on the nomination together with the museum and the Lelepa community.

“Chief Roi Mata’s Domain is a unique cultural landscape,” explained Dr Wilson, who led the team that put the site forward for World Heritage protection. “It’s not just that the mass voluntary live burial is exceptional relative to the small size of the local population, but also that the descendant communities have observed the prohibition on the island for four centuries.”

Dr Ballard, the project researcher, said: “The oral traditions of Roi Mata and his legacy of peace-making that are still being told by the Lelepa community actually guided French archaeologist José Garanger to the grave in the 1960s, and accurately predicted much of the detail uncovered by his excavation.”

The nomination process was supported by the Division of Pacific and Asian History, RSPAS, and assisted by the Australian Government’s Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts.

ANU researchers also played a central role in the successful World Heritage inscription of the other Pacific cultural site, the Kuk Early Agricultural Site in PNG. Archaeologist Professor Jack Golson from RSPAS and his former ANU students, Dr Jon Muke and Dr Tim Denham, have spent many years working on the history of Kuk, the site of some of the earliest agriculture in the world. A buried network of drains in the Kuk swamp has revealed an almost unbroken record of agricultural practice stretching back at least 7,000 years.

View of the off-shore island of Artok, where Chief Roi Mata was buried, and which has been protected by traditional prohibitions (from Vanuatu Cultural Centre website).

Conference: European Society for Oceanists (ESFO) in Verona (10-12 July 2008)

2008-07-07T06:27:00.000-07:00

From the 10th to the 12th of July the European Society for Oceanists (ESFO) will be meeting in Verona. For those of you not going to Verona information on the meeting can be found here, and a PDF of the papers to be given looked at here.

Book Contract Competition - California Series in Public Anthropology

2008-07-03T05:44:00.000-07:00

The University of California Press and the Center for Public Anthropology
are sponsoring competitions to award two book contracts this fall in
the press' public anthropology series. Please click here for a PDF for details.

Robert Borofesky has clarified that the competition is now divided into
two categories:

individuals with doctorates and
graduate students who have not yet received their doctorates

The deadline for the competition is October 1, 2008.

More information about the series and competition can be found on the Public
Anthropology website (publicanthropology.org) by clicking here.

As noted on the website:
Individuals interested in submitting manuscripts to the Series should,
as a first step, submit a 3-4,000 word overview of their manuscript –
detailing the problems addressed, the manner in which they are addressed
through the manuscript, and the style of writing used. (Obviously, a clear
indication of the writing style will be the overview itself.) They should
also include a chapter by chapter outline of the manuscript with three
to five sentence descriptions of each chapter’s contents. These two
statements should be emailed, as attachments, to
borofsky@publicanthropology.org with a brief cover letter.

New Films about PNG

2008-07-02T09:11:00.001-07:00

Two recent films about PNG that I saw screened back in February at the Pacific Film and History Workshop hosted by the ANU and run by Chris Ballard and Vicki Luker are worth highlighting. The first is Papa Bilong Chimbu (2007) and the second is Crater Mountain Story (2006). Both deal with different issues relevant to Melanesian communities and besides being interesting in their own right are useful for teaching.

Papa Bilong Chimbu is directed and produced by Verena Thomas and chronicles the life of Thomas' great-uncle Father John Nilles (1905-1993), who from 1937 worked for 54 years as a Catholic missionary in the Chimbu district. Reminiscent of Connolly and Anderson's film First Contact (1983), the film weaves together Thomas' relationship with Niles, her own journey to Chimbu to interview those who knew and worked with her great-uncle, with historical photographs taken by Nilles and a chronicle of Nilles engagement with the Chimbu. The result is a fascinating film about Nilles entanglement with the Chimbu, the history of transformation in the region and the filmmaker's own encompassment by these relationships. The film is distributed by Ronin Films and clips can be seen on the website: http://www.papabilongchimbu.com/

Crater Mountain Story is directed by Martin Maden for the Research and Conservation Foundation of Papua New Guinea (RFC) and was created with members of Maimafu village. The film explores people's reactions to a proposed mining project and mixes interviews with villagers with skits and performances put on by villagers for the film. The film provides wonderful insight into local views about conservation, what development entails and what it is that people desire. Clips of the film are available on Maden's website: Maimafu Flue Finale, Maimafu Flute Finale 2 and Siri Gets Ready. The film is a good companion to Paige West's recent book Conservation Is Our Government Now: The Politics of Ecology in Papua New Guinea (2006) about the Crater Mountain Wildlife Management Area.

New Publications Feature

2008-07-01T09:24:00.000-07:00

In an attempt to help highlight new published works - monographs and books - on Melanesian topics, I have added a new link on the side of the book where I will periodically add titles and links for readers.

For example ANU E-Press (a favorite of mine) has recently come out with some new titles that will be of interest to people:

Brij V. Lal and Vicki Luker have edited a new book entitled Telling Pacific Lives: Prisms of Process (2008), the contributions of which arose out of a conference on life histories and the writing of life stories in the Pacific at the ANU's Division of Pacific and Asian History held in December 2005. While the collection will appeal to people interested in the Pacific, history and life stories more widely several of the essays deal with Melanesian topics:

Deborah Van Heekeren's chapter 'The Kila Wari Stories: Framing a Life and Preserving a Cosmology' examines the life story of the heroic figure Kila Wari as told to her by the Vula'a of Irupara village on the Papuan coast.
Michael Goddard's contribution is entitled 'From "My Story" to "The Story of Myself" - Colonial Transformations of Personal Narratives among the Motu-Koita of Papua New Guinea' and builds on his work in Port Moresby.
Wolfgang Kempf's chapter 'Mobility, Modernisation and Agency: The Life Story of John Kikang from Papua New Guinea.' examines the life story of John Kikang (1927-1997), a Ngaing man from the Rai coast of Madang, to look at broader shifts in people's lives in PNG.
Geoffrey Gray builds on his work on Chinnery with a chapter about the anthropologist entitled, 'E.W.P. Chinnery: A Self-Made Anthropologist.'
Noted Pacific historian Hank Nelson further elucidates the individuals involved in the combat that affected Papua New Guinea and Australia during WWII in a chapter entitled, 'Lives Told: Australians in Papua and New Guinea.'
Clive Moore contributes with a chapter on the preparation of the Solomon Island's Historical Dictionary entitled, 'Biography of a Nation: Compiling a Historical Dictionary of the Solomon Islands.'

Sinclair Dinnen and Stewart Firth have edited a book entitled Politics and State Building in Solomon Islands (2008) which examines 'a crisis moment in recent Solomon Islands history. Contributors examine what happened when unrest engulfed the capital of the small Melanesian country in the aftermath of the 2006 national elections, and consider what these events show about the Solomon Islands political system, the influence of Asian interests in business and politics, and why the crisis is best understood in the context of the country’s volatile blend of traditional and modern politics.' Contributers include: Sam Alasia, Matthew Allen, Transform Aqorau, Anita Butler, Sinclair Dinnen, Stewart Firth, Jon Fraenkel, Tarcisius Tara Kabutaulaka, Clive Moore, Mary-Louise O'Callaghan, Jaap Timmer, and Ian Scales
Kate Barclay and Ian Cartright have written a book entitled Capturing Wealth from Tuna: Case Studies from the Pacific (2007) which examines the tuna fisheries in the Western and Central Pacific. Chapters deal with Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and Fiji (along with the Cook Islands, Kiribati and the Marshall Islands).

Please let us know if you have a new book coming out that you would like listed.

State of PNG's Forests

2008-06-30T14:35:00.000-07:00

The rate and extent of deforestation in Papua New Guinea has recently been highlighted through the work of scientists at the University of Papua New Guinea's Remote Sensing Center and Australian National University in a recent report (Shearman et. al. 2008) and further reported on in several news articles (see listing below which has been compiled by Robin Hide). The topic of deforestation and the role of forests is also highlighted in the recent issue ofScience (13 June 2008).

The first detailed assessment of PNG's forests, the report is an informed summary of the state of PNG forests and usefully places them in a global perspective. The report reminds us that PNG possess the sixth most extensive mangrove forest in the world and the island of New Guinea possess the 'largest area of semi-contiguous
mangroves in the world' (Sherman et. al. 2008: 21). However as many reader's know PNG's forests are under extensive pressure by industrial logging (both legal and illegal) and agricultural projects (oil palm, etc.). Though the report relates news such that almost 60 percent of the forests of eastern islands are accessible to logging and that by 2002, 63 percent had been logged or degraded, the report also relates that 70 percent of PNG
is still forested (counting intact and re-growing forests). The highlight of the report, and what the media has picked up on, is how Sherman et. al. have utilised satellite imagery to document the extent of transformations in PNG's forests.

Reactions to the report can be found on Science in the Public website. Colin Filer (Resource Management in Asia-Pacific Program in RSPAS at ANU), who has for a long time now written about issues around PNG's forests and logging industry, notes the author's unfortunate conflation of deforestation and degradation lead the authors to erronously conclude that ' "half of PNG’s forests will be gone within 13 years". This is a gross exaggeration which might serve some rhetorical or political purpose, but anyone who flies around PNG on a regular basis and can be bothered to look out of an aircraft window must seriously wonder how this change could actually come about.'

Shearman, P.L., Bryan, J.E., Ash, J., Hunnam, P., Mackey, B., Lokes, B. (2008).
The State of the Forests of Papua New Guinea: Mapping the extent and condition
of forest cover and measuring the drivers of forest change in the period 1972-2002.
University of Papua New Guinea.

IMAGE: BEFORE AND AFTER Forest area near Milne Bay in 1990, top,
and 2005. (University of Papua New Guinea; Image appears in the New York Times 3 June 2008).

NEW WEBSITE: The Melanesian

2008-06-27T08:44:00.000-07:00

The Melanesian is an editorial news site committed committed to a serious engagement
with issues affecting peoples living in Melanesia. These issues may include, but are not
limited to: the environment(mining, petroleum, logging, etc); health (HIV/AIDS, etc);
politics (corruption and the criminalisation of the state, NGOs and civil society
movements etc); rule of law and human rights; and issues of sovereignty (Free West
Papua Campaign, etc).

The site, co-founded by Andrew Moutu and Justin Shaffner, is newly created and still
undergoing construction. The editorial board will expand to include a diversity of
expertise and experiences.

Please visit The Melanesian at http://themelanesian.org to air views and circulate your 
insights. If there are ways you would want to have this site developed, please let us
know.

RESEARCH NOTES: Landowners at Marengo and Ramu Nickel (Dr. Laura Zimmer-Tamakoshi)

2008-06-23T01:12:00.000-07:00

On 14 July 2008 at the National Research Institute (Port Moresby)
at 10:00 a.m. Dr. Laura  Zimmer-Tamakoshi (former MIG chair) will
be discussing her recent work at the Marengo mining prospect
(95 kilometres south west of Madang) and how landowners there are
connected to landowners at Ramu Nickel (mostly one and the same!).
Both the Marengo and Ramu Nickel prospects are in the Gende people's
home territory in southern Madang Province. Laura has carried out most
of her ethnographic research with the Gende since 1982, her focus
being social and political aspects of economic change (or not) and
the Gende's long involvement with the global economy. Since Laura
has just completed a large survey/census in a number of Gende villages,
her "talk" will be more discussion than formal presentation. Laura is
a research affiliate with both the National Research Institute and
Bryn Mawr College. Her most recent publication is "Its not about women only"
in Pulling the Right Threads (edited by Laura Zimmer-Tamakoshi and
Jeanette Dickerson-Putman).

Laura will send an update after she discusses her research at NRI

For further information see:

CONTRIBUTIONS SOUGHT: Austronesian Soundscapes - Performing Arts in Oceania and Southeast Asia

2008-06-21T07:37:00.000-07:00

Call for contributions to an edited volume
AUSTRONESIAN SOUNDSCAPES. PERFORMING ARTS IN OCEANIA
AND SOUTHEAST ASIA.

To be published as volume no. 4 in the IIAS book series, University of
Amsterdam Press. Estimated publication: summer 2009. Editor: Birgit Abels,
International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden, Netherlands. Series
editors: Max Sparreboom & Paul van der Velde.

Austronesia (the area where Austronesian languages are spoken) stretches
over a large and mainly oceanic area: from Madagascar in the west, to
Easter Island in the east. Customarily, Austronesia is roughly divided into
Formosa/Taiwan, the Malay Archipelago, and the Pacific islands of
Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia. The music of some Austronesian areas
has yet to be described and analyzed in publication. This is particularly
lamentable given the value (beyond musicological contribution) a study of
local and regional music, grounded in cultural theory, could have. Some
parts of the region have aptly been described as "laboratories of social
and cultural change," and music plays a decisive role in both the expression
and construction of identities, i.e., with regard to key factors driving
social and cultural transitions.

"Austronesian Soundscapes. Performing Arts in Oceania and Southeast Asia"
seeks to combine analyses of Austronesian music in a single, edited
volume. To that end, the editor is calling for papers focusing on specific areas
of Austronesia, describing and explaining performing arts in their cultural
context(s) and transcending disciplinary frontiers within the humanities
and social sciences. The articles should present studies of individual
cultures through the "lens" that music offers.

The volume will collate the material and will draw together contemporary
cultural studies and musical analyses. "Austronesian Soundscapes. Performing
Arts in Oceania and Southeast Asia" aims to fill an important research gap,
and to demonstrate, at a methodological level, how these two disciplines,
cultural studies and music studies, can strengthen, complement and enrich
each other; how a cultural study of music (rather than an "ethnomusicology"
or a "comparative musicology") such as this, can create new vistas for
understanding the challenges faced by Austronesian cultures in a globalized
world.

The editor encourages contributions which devote rigorous analytical
attention to traditional musical styles, and also to emergent popular music
and styles. Music is fundamental to the organization of society, and vice
versa. It is central to the generation of meaning; yet at the same time,
sound already carries meaning. Because of this subtle and complex
relationship, the musical analyses should be deployed to leverage a deeper
understanding of the cultural contexts that bring the music about. How do
the culture carriers themselves conceptualize the meaning that is
expressed and renewed through their music-making? The articles should
not ask Gayatri Spivak's groundbreaking question of the late 1980s -
Can the subaltern speak? They should ask instead, how it speaks
through music?

Please submit your abstract (300–400 words) and a short bio electronically
as a Word file e-mail attachment by August 15, 2008, to Birgit Abels,
International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS), at
austronesiansoundscapes*@*gmail.com (please remove the asterisks before
and after the "@"). You are invited to consult with Birgit before developing
your research article, and early notification of interest would be greatly
appreciated. Final submissions should be 5,000–8,000 words in length and
are due by January 31, 2009.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Dr. Birgit Abels
International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS)
Postbus 9515
2300 RA Leiden, the Netherlands
+31-71-527-5494

CALL FOR PAPERS: Directions in Oceanic Research (DOR)

2008-06-12T10:09:00.000-07:00

Call for Papers Directions in Oceanic Research (DOR)

Call Deadline:         Friday 15 August 2008
Dates:                      9-11 December 2008
Location:                University of Newcastle, Central Coast Campus,
                      New South Wales
Contact:                  Bill Palmer
Meeting email:        oceanic.conference@newcastle.edu.au
Meeting website:
www.newcastle.edu.au/school/hss/research/groups/pacific-languages-
research-group/conferences--workshops.html

Meeting Description:

In recent years research attention in linguistics has to some extent
moved away from Oceanic languages, towards eastern Indonesia and Formosa
in Austronesian, and towards Papuan. While these are significant areas
for research, this trend raises questions about the extent to which
Oceanic languages retain continuing significance for wider linguistic
research.

This conference explores the place of Oceanic language research in the
wider agenda of linguistics by focusing on two themes. One is concerned
with aspects of Oceanic, from broad issues in Oceanic grammar to
specific phenomena in individual languages, that hold continuing
significance in informing a wider understanding of language. The second
theme relates to the interaction and integration of successive layers of
linguistic research in investigating Oceanic, particularly the core
layers of documentation, description, typology and formal theory.

The interaction and successful integration of these layers is crucial to
linguistics’ core research agenda of modelling the language faculty.
Modelling language is the function of formal theory, but to successfully
do so, formal theory depends on thorough descriptions of individual
languages and broadly based typologies of phenomena to model. Typology
in turn also depends on detailed descriptions, while descriptive
linguistics depends on adequate documentation. These four successive
layers of research activity are interdependent and each essential to the
overall research program. This conference explores the interaction and
integration of multiple layers in investigating Oceanic.

To address these themes the conference brings together key scholars
representing each of these core layers of research within Oceanic.

The conference will be hosted by the newly-formed Pacific Languages
Research Group at the University of Newcastle (Australia). It will be
held at the Central Coast Campus of the University of Newcastle, in
Ourimbah, New South Wales.

Invited speakers:
Frantisek Lichtenberk (Auckland) Description
Diane Massam (Toronto) Formal theory
Claire Moyse-Faurie (LACITO-CNRS, Paris) Typology
Nick Thieberger (Hawai’i) Documentation
René van den Berg (SIL PNG) Integrating research

Call for papers:
Abstracts are invited for 30 minute talks (20 minute presentations + 10
minute discussion) on any topic relating to Oceanic, in the following
overlapping areas:

• The interaction and integration of multiple layers of linguistic
research in the field of Oceanic languages.
• Aspects of Oceanic languages with continuing wider significance.

We welcome papers in one or more of the following areas, particularly
those integrating more than one area:

• documentation;
• description;
• typology;
• formal theory.

We also welcome papers relating to the wider significance of Oceanic in
other subdisciplines, including:

• language change;
• language and prehistory;
• language, culture and cognition;
• anthropological linguistics;
• language endangerment;
• language maintenance;
• language acquisition.

Abstracts should not exceed one A4 page with a 2.5cm margin on each side
and in 12 pt. Times New Roman font, with one additional page for data
and references. IPA data should use Doulos SIL font if possible.

Abstracts should be submitted in two versions. One version should be in
Word, consisting of the title, followed on separate lines by the
author(s) name(s), affiliation(s), and email contacts. The second
version should be fully anonymized, and submitted preferably as a pdf,
or in Word.

All abstracts should be sent as email attachments to
oceanic.conference@newcastle.edu.au. Submission deadline is Friday 15
August.

Registration:

Registration details will be announced in due course. Registration will
be A$100, or A$50 for students/unwaged.

Dr Bill Palmer
Convenor
Pacific Languages Research Group
School of Humanities and Social Science
University of Newcastle
Central Coast Campus
Chittaway Rd
Ourimbah NSW 2258
ph 02 4348 4050
email bill.palmer@newcastle.edu.au

Some materials of note....

2008-05-25T14:40:00.000-07:00

It has been a while since I have posted anything to the MIG blog so I thought with the summer coming I would try to more regularly post items of interest to members. While the following items have been circulating on the web, I thought I would link some of them together here:

Jared Diamond's piece 'Vengeance is Ours: What can tribal societies tell us about our need to get even?' in the 21 April 2008 issue of New Yorker has generated some interesting buzz about Papua New Guinea. Alex Golub has usefully commented on the piece in Savage Minds.

Interesting video from CBS 60 Minutes, regrettably called "Garden of Eden," of an area in the Foja Mountains of Indonesian Papua which Bruce Beehler (ornithologist, tropical VP of Melanesia Center for Biodiversity Conservation, Conservation International) is working to study and save from human encroachment. The film shows some remarkable images of birds of paradise, and bower birds. An article by Beehler 'The Fojha Mountains of Indonesia: Exploring the Lost World' gives some of the context of the trip and research.

In the March 2008 issue of Harper's Magazine David Mason has a new short story entitled 'The Ecstasy of Alfred Russel Wallace', which imagines Wallace's specimen collecting and musings after sending his essay 'On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely From the Original Type' to Darwin.

Call for proposals for MIG sponsored AAA panel for 2008 meeting

2008-02-11T16:25:00.000-08:00

The new theme for the upcoming AAA is out now (see below), and we are soliciting suggestions for a MIG sponsored panel for the meeting. So that Jamon and I can have time to decide which panel that MIG will sponsor we ask that panels are submitted to us by the 15th of March. Proposals are not due to the AAA until 5pm eastern time on the 1st of April. Details can be found here: http://dev.aaanet.org/meetings/presenters/index.cfm

Just a reminder the MIG sponsors sessions, which in keeping with our mandate, highlight the wider relevance of Melanesian anthropology and the region to the discipline. The last session organised by Aletta Biersack and David Lipset for the 2007 AAA entitled, 'Theorizing the Postcolonial State and its Instablities', was a wonderful example of what the MIG seeks to do.

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions.

Inclusion, Collaboration & Engagement

The theme for the 2008 AAA Annual Meeting in San Francisco is “Inclusion, Collaboration and Engagement.” This theme provides us the opportunity to critically examine anthropology's relationships: across subfields, with other disciplines, with our many publics, and with contemporary social problems. The Executive Program Committee envisions healthy debate as we confront methodological, ethical, and epistemological concerns that unite and divide us; as well as discuss the challenges, risks, and opportunities for growth enabled by this dialog.

Inclusion, Collaboration, and Engagement are ideas that have been central to anthropology throughout the discipline’s history and they are particularly important today. Anthropologists, scholars in other disciplines, and the general public have begun to recognize that anthropology has a great deal to contribute in this era of globalization. Still, our discipline remains a mystery to many and we are often not approached when social science information is needed. Moreover, anthropologists are conflicted about whether and how to participate in important public debates. Although there are the myriad attempts to develop a public interest anthropology, we are also wary of activism and public engagement, particularly as we recall government influence on anthropology during times of war.

This theme deserves our scholarly exploration. Analysis of the processes that promote inclusion, collaboration and engagement for positive human outcomes is a common area of interest for both academic and applied/practicing anthropologists, as is clear communication of anthropological perspectives to the wider public.

Inclusion

Anthropology’s historic mission to study humanity through the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities by definition requires the inclusion of multiple disciplines. For example, paleoanthropology and archaeology depend on chemistry, zoology, botany, geology and other disciplines to date sites and interpret data. Similarly, linguistic and sociocultural anthropology regularly include perspectives from other disciplines, including history, philosophy, psychology, and political science. Moreover, there is much merit in an enhanced inclusive dialogue between the branches of anthropology. Cultural and biological anthropology, for example, have opportunities to work together in examining themes such as race, disease, and the environment. Many applied and practicing anthropologists have joint roots in anthropology and other professions such as public health, urban planning, education, business, international development or social work. Their work relies on and contributes to these other disciplines as well as anthropology.

Inclusive anthropology implies more than a holistic or interdisciplinary approach. It suggests research problems and relationships that explicitly address the knowledges and concerns of those who have been relegated to peripheral zones of analysis and theory because of preconceptions about the seemingly static division of intellectual labor. Bringing diverse voices and epistemic perspectives onto the discipline's center stage—and enlarging that space according to a less hierarchical logic—is consistent with anthropology’s historic principle of inclusion.

Collaboration

Working together toward a common goal is a central characteristic of anthropology, where collaboration may describe work done by teams of anthropologists from diverse subfields or research done by a single anthropologist working together with a subject. For example, heterogeneous research teams in physical anthropology and archeology assemble to address complex intellectual problems. Additionally, the relationship between anthropologists and many Native American tribes might now be best described as collaborative. Native American tribes often require that all anthropological work conducted on reservations directly and actively involve tribal members in the design, implementation, and dissemination of research that addresses problems with contemporary relevance to their tribes. This reconceptualization of the researcher-subject relationship both suggests new challenges and reveals exciting opportunities to improve research and ensure it engages community needs.

Anthropologists who use participatory action methods engage in a knowledge production process that converts "informants" into research consultants and collaborators. These methods can empower local people to have a voice in government and corporate decision-making. Beyond invoking notions of partnership and the sharing of ethnographic authority rhetorically, many anthropologists work to build concrete collaborative relationships in community settings. The benefits, challenges, and contradictory outcomes of collaboration are worthy of examination and constructive self-criticism.

Engagement

Engaged anthropology has many dimensions. Engagement is becoming a key value in college and university settings where anthropologists recognize that relationships with local publics and community organizations are essential to higher education. From both within and outside of academia, engaged anthropologists have examined public policy issues related to welfare reform, immigration, and protection of indigenous knowledge and rights, and have joined with local participants to instigate and sustain government and community change.

In this area anthropology has much to offer, but the discipline has not yet decisively stepped forward. This year’s theme provides an opportunity for academic and applied/practicing anthropologists to engage in dialogue to set a new agenda for making anthropology increasingly relevant to key issues in the twenty-first century, including social identity, economic growth, cultural preservation, peace-making, and environmental and social justice.

New Convenor Elect

2008-02-11T16:10:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to let everyone know that the results of the MIG elections are in and I am pleased to announce that Jamon Halvaksz has been elected convenor elect. As many of you know Jamon is an assistant professor in the anthropology department of the University of Texas at San Antonio and works in the Wau-Bulolo area of Papua New Guinea.

I wanted to thank everyone for voting.

Joshua

Pictures of Melanesia on Flickr

2008-01-03T19:29:00.000-08:00

Friday 3 October
9.30 - 10.00	Registration
10.00 - 10.30	Opening Session Chair: Mary Jacobus (University of Cambridge) Alison Richard, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge
10.30 - 11.00	Coffee
11.00-12.00	Keynote Lecture Annelise Riles (Cornell University): Title TBA
12.00-13.00	Lunch
13.00-14.00	Transforming Law in Melanesia and Beyond Chair: Eric Hirsch (Brunel University) Melissa Demian (University of Kent) Eliciting the ‘Underlying Law’ Ira Bashkow (University of Virginia) When Does a Gift Begin?
4.00-14.15	Break
14.15- 15.30	Sandra Bamford (University of Toronto) Unitary Subjects, Discrepant Bodies: Domestic Violence and the Law in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea James Leach (University of Aberdeen) Mama Lo, Intellectual Property Law, Emergence, Constraint, and Personhood Eric Hirsch (Brunel University) Introduction to Discussion
15.30-16.00	Discussion
16.00-16.30	Coffee
16.30-17.30	Obligations and Anthropology: Humanitarianism Beyond Human Rights Chair: Wendy James (University of Oxford) Harri Englund (University of Cambridge) Extreme Poverty and Existential Obligations: Beyond Morality in the Anthropology of Africa? Erica Bornstein (University of Wisconsin) Accounting for Trust: Obligations in NGO-work in India
17.30-17.45	Break
17.45-19.00	Liisa Malkki (Stanford University) Toys and Other Gifts: On The Cultivation of the Humanitarian Imagination Maja Petrovic-Steger (University of Cambridge) 'Humanitarian Health’ in Post-conflict Serbia Wendy James (University of Oxford) Introduction to Discussion
19.00-19.30	Discussion

Saturday 4 October
9.00 - 10.00	‘Conflict Resolution’ and the Auditing of Social Relations under International Law Chair: Jane Cowan (Sussex University) Yael Navaro-Yashin (University of Cambridge) Governing Social Relations Internationally: The Legal Management of Conflict Sari Wastell (Goldsmiths College, London) Scales of Justice for the Former Yugoslavia: Social and Legal Calibrations of Culpability for Wartime Atrocity
10.00 - 10.15	Break
10.15 - 11.30	Andrew Barry (University of Oxford) The Curse of Economics: Oil, Conflict and the Law James Weiner (RSPAS, Australia National University) Conflict in the Statutory Elicitation of Aboriginal Culture in Australia Jane Cowan (Sussex University) Introduction to Discussion
11.30-12.00	Discussion
12.00-13.00	Lunch
13.00-14.00	Rights to Research?: Anthropology, Academia and the New Institutionalism Chair: Georgina Born (University of Cambridge) Monica Konrad (University of Cambridge): Title TBA Alberto Corsin-Jimenez (University of Manchester): On Disproportionality
14.00-14.15	Break
14.15-15.30	Debbora Battaglia (Mount Holyoke College) Warming to Interdisciplinary Flows and Friction: An Anthropologist’s First Contact with the Science of ‘Weird Life’ Don Brenneis (University of California, Santa Cruz) Optimizing Outliers Georgina Born (University of Cambridge) Introduction to Discussion
15.30-16.00	Discussion
16.00-16.30	Coffee
16.30-17.00	Closing Session Chair: Alan Macfarlane (University of Cambridge)
17.00-18.00	Reception