Since 2017, during my PhD studies at the University of Tokyo, I have conducted fieldwork research in the West Fataleka region of northern Malaita, Melanesia, and published my findings in the field of cultural anthropology in the Japanese-speaking world.The fieldwork took place from November 2017 to February 2020, over a total period of 14 months. The fieldwork was conducted in the West Fatereka region, where I stayed at local community, learning the local language and building relationships with several individuals and groups living in the area to enable ongoing research in the future.
At the start of the research, most of the land in the West Fatareka area was customarily held by local clan groups, who regarded these lands as important not only for subsistence and residence, but also in terms of ancestry and other aspects of collective identity. On the other hand, several foreign-owned logging companies were operating in the area in search of the tropical forest resources that covered most of the land, and tensions between the local people over profits were rising. Against this background, the applicant herself initially conducted research on the social transformation of local communities associated with development, from the perspective of local conceptions and practices over land.

Development And Culture, Social Theory, Indigenous Knowledge, Anthropology Of Knowledge, Infrastructure

Sociology
Anthropology

Melanesia

20th century
21st century
The Colonial time
First and Early contacts

Fataleka