Imagination is at the core of any research endeavour. It is also an eminently social practice, which gave rise to a wide range of cultural constructions in regard to studies about Pacific island communities. Accordingly, Pacific Islanders and Europeans engage with ideas of each other without ever leaving their respective localities. Visual media trigger many of these imaginary practices, which in their turn form the frameworks for popular understandings and medial pitching of the results of our research. With this as interpretive context, misunderstandings are rife - and withdrawing to our academic chambers might seem the better option. But our scholarly obligation to bring “knowledge to the people” by way of informed analyses should rather encourage us to use elements of popular imagination as points of entry for the dissemination of Pacific research. This session invites contributions that engage questions related to imagination and re-presentation in many different senses, for instance: • The changing historical context for the imagining of the Pacific. • Reflexive engagements with the pre-fieldwork fantasies and fieldwork realities. • The impact of new visual technologies for the perception of other people’s lives. • Implications of developing Pacific based media and cultural industries. • Experiences with use/misuse of Pacific research to a wider audience (general public, NGOs, aid agencies, scholars). • Sea level rise and the “disappearing Pacific islands” discourse. • The politics of re-presentation in a post-colonial and neo-colonial era. • Cultural policies, ethics and collaborative researches with regard to island studies and re-presenting contemporary Pacific identities.
Paper submissions are closed