European Society for Oceanists 2015 Conference

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Session Detail (parallel)

Perceptions of Oceania in European textbooks and educational media

Coordinator(s)

Matthias Kowasch, Hermann Mueckler

Session presentation

European powers have established educational systems in their former colonies. Students in New Caledonia or French Polynesia, for example, have to learn the storming of the Bastille or to calculate time-distance relations of the French TGV. They often learn less about their ‘own history’ or regional politics. We ask which topics are discussed in European textbooks and educational media, but also in the former colonies?

In European states, the geography and history of Pacific Islands countries (PICs) are not an important educational priority. Generally, there is little knowledge about history, development issues or environmental impacts of human activities in PICs. Climate change and rising sea levels, with their impacts on island communities, are topics that we can find in European textbooks, and increasing number of young Europeans travel to Australia or New Zealand with a work and travel visa.

Textbooks are a particular research topic, because they are a vehicle for politically motivated and socially negotiated interpretations and values, passed on to generations of young people. As a media for state-controlled knowledge production, they refer to what is seen as reliable knowledge in a society. In a 2012 German textbook from Lower Saxony about Australia and Oceania, 13 of 87 pages dealed with the PICs, and 74 pages with Australia and New Zealand. We have to question whether reliable knowledge about Oceania is transmitted to the students?

The session invites contributions from different disciplines that reflect the perception of Oceania in European textbooks and educational media. Papers addressing historical events are also welcomed, as well as those that compare natural resource exploitation or climate change in different media. We ask how geographical or historical concepts are presented and how educational media construct ‘otherness’. In the light of the conference’s general theme, we wish to investigate the relationship between Europe and Pacific Islands countries by analysing the knowledge that is generally applied in educational media.

Paper submissions are closed

Accepted papers

19th and early 20th century trade cards about Oceania as tools of information, education and propaganda for European colonial powers

Hermann Mueckler (University of Vienna)

From the mid-19th century on trade cards became a significant medium not only for advertising cosumer products, but also for promoting and distributing political messages like the idea of colonizing „heathen“ regions for the purpose of exploiting resources and bringing to the indigenous populations the benefits of Western civilization. Regarding the Pacific Islands the presentation highlights the role of trade cards as a “channel“ to create a specific image of the Pacific Islands as a region worth to be colonized, missionized and exploited. As core symbol of this idea figured the „South Sea“-cliché which was widely used to merge visions of unspoiled, peaceful island societies and dreams of a paradise on earth, with goals of establishing political control over the islands in the context of the race for colonies of the Western powers in the age of imperialism. Trade cards from different European countries and their companies are presented as examples how and why these specific medium was used to reach especially children, who collected these cards. Children were seen as the potential future generation to colonize and populate colonies in Oceania. These trade cards were often collected in albums which acted as textbooks to describe the colonies and their indigenous populations to a broad general audience.

Learning-by-looking: European education and People of all nations

Max Quanchi (University of the South Pacific)

Based on a case study of "Learning-by-looking”, I propose that serial, illustrated encyclopaedia were a means of learning at home, self-education, entertainment, propaganda and a cheap accessible avenue for European students, and adults, to learn visually about the colonies, and as leather-bound volumes, they became a regularly re-visited archive of the world outside Europe, including the Pacific islands. This was a visual experience. "People of all nations" offered separate entries for Samoa and British territories and "Women of all nations" included Micronesia, Polynesia, Melanesia, and Torres Strait and New Guinea. These categories reinforced Europe’s delineations of the colonial world, perpetuated current scientific theories, simplified a broad sweep of history and promoted the concept of travel, and popular tourism. Clothed in pedagogic pretentions promoted by a list of distinguished FRGS, FRAI, professors and expedition leaders - CG Seligman, Emil Torday, Athol Joyce and Theodor Koch-Grünberg – these partly voyeurism, pro-Empire, ethnographic, and psuedo-scientific monthly editions created a place-image and perception of the tropics and distant worlds. The gold-lettering and leather bound volumes on home and library shelves demonstrate how profusely illustrated serial encyclopaedia evolved as an avenue for Europe’s tropicalisation of the Pacific and ownership of the world.

How the representations precede and prevail over the eye contact

Bernard Rigo (Université de Nouvelle-Calédonie)

The discovery of Oceania took place under the double sign of universalism inherited from the Enlightenment and culturalism inherited from romanticism. This controversy was initiated by Kant and Herder. They were both influenced by Rousseau, the founder of ethnological approach according to Levi-Strauss. Actually, before the European discovery of Tahiti or New Caledonia, Rousseau has imagined the first cultural degrees by which the universal wild man extracted himself from the nature. At the same time, he has opposed the cold rationality of the North and the warm emotionalism of the South, protecting the good nature of Émile from the corruptions of the civilization. So we understand that Enlightenment evolutionism causes (and partly restrains) the romantic and culturalist reaction. It is important to keep in mind this ambivalent inheritance. It is from an evolutionary perspective consolidated by universalist convictions that Jules Ferry's republic advocated an Overseas colonial policy, whereas native peoples learnt to cry out their identity and their rights in the Westen culturalist rhetoric.
Texts from Spencer, Frazer, Durkheim, Lévy-Bruhl, Leenhardt, Gusdorf, Eliade, Augé, Gauchet, Maffesoli, Girard, even from a certain extent Lévi-Strauss himself, present the "traditional societies" under the double figure of the weakness of the individualism and the participation. In the history of the ideas, the representation had preceded the eye contact, the cultural otherness has been theorized before the encounter with Oceanian people. It is the logic and the recurrence of this perception through the literature and books of anthropology that we shall attempt to highlight.

A Papua New Guinean “Lost Tribe“ in Western Media

Lorenzo Brutti (Aix-Marseille University, CNRS, EHESS)

This paper analyses the stereotypes builded by Western media on the supposed discovery of a "Lost Tribe" in Papua New Guinea in the 1990s. Of course the Hewa group called “Liawep” by journalists were not a lost tribe. As an anthroplogist, I had the chance to carry out fieldwork among the Hewa during those years. In my paper I would like to point out the main issues contributing to build this contemporary myth. Scientific issue: The Liawep are "lost" according to the western media, but not according to other Papua New Guineans and to the anthropologists working in the area. Legal issue: the Western journalists are aimed at going in an isolated area of Papua New Guinea searching for a lost tribe and make their journalist scoop. Often these journalists have illegally entered the region without making a series of medical examinations (thorax screen, HIV-test, etc.) in order to avoid dangerous intrusion provoking the spreading of typical western diseases. Ethic issue: sometimes these "first contacts" between the journalists and the local people are tragic, as in one case I will narrate, sometime just bad for the autochtonous people contributing to the exploitation of the false portray of local Papua New Guineans as a lost tribe.

Representations of Australia and New Zealand in German and French textbooks

Matthias Kowasch (University College of Teacher Education Styria)

Péter Bagoly-Simo (Humboldt University of Berlin)

In European states, the geography of Australia and New Zealand is not an important educational priority. The educational standards in Geography in Germany do not especially mention Australia and New Zealand, except as a regional module at upper secondary level. Many students, after their high school degree, want to go working and travelling in Australia or New Zealand. Nevertheless, they generally have little knowledge about indigenous cultures or environmental impacts of human activities in both countries.
Textbooks are a particular research topic, because they are a vehicle for politically motivated and socially negotiated interpretations and values, passed on to generations of young people. As a media for state-controlled knowledge production, they refer to what is seen as reliable knowledge in a society. We have to question whether reliable knowledge about Australia and New Zealand is transmitted to the students?
The paper investigates the representations of Australia and New Zealand in German and French textbooks. Generally, textbooks often apply the principle of “one idea for one place”. We ask which topics are discussed and which images of both countries are transmitted to the students? While France still has overseas territories in the Pacific Islands region, it is not the same with Germany. We ask if this matter leads to different representations and significances of Australia and New Zealand in textbooks? The results are based on an empirical study of recent textbooks (2010-2014) for upper secondary levels.