European Society for Oceanists 2015 Conference

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Session Detail (parallel)

Island studies: re-presentation in and of the Pacific

Coordinator(s)

Marc Tabani, Thorgeir Kolshus

Session presentation

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

Accepted papers

Shooting Melanesians: Martin Johnson and Edward Salisbury in the Southwest Pacific

Lamont Lindstrom (University of Tulsa)

By the turn of the 20th century, American photographers were venturing into the western Pacific. Two of the first cinematic teams filming in Melanesia were Kansan explorers Martin and Osa Johnson and yachtsman Edward A. Salisbury, joined by Merian Cooper of later King Kong fame. Both drew on representational practice honed partly along the American Western Frontier. Both took still and motion pictures in the New Hebrides and Solomon Islands which they used to illustrate magazine articles, travelogue books, and silent films including the Johnsons’ Cannibals of the South Seas (1918) and Head Hunters of the South Seas (1922) and Salisbury/Cooper’s Gow the Head Hunter (1928). Differences in their print and motion imagery of islanders reflect the newer movie aesthetic, stimulating new ways to shoot Melanesians as spectators, as actors, and as occasional filmmakers themselves.

The Value of Video, the Value of Anthropology: Reflections on Representation in Tonga

Mike Poltorak (University of Kent)

In the creative spaces of communication between people from Oceania, researchers and anthropologists of the Pacific has emerged some of the most vital contributions to anthropological and wider debates on reciprocal research, collaborative anthropology, reverse anthropology and research accessibility. The contribution of video and film as research has largely been ignored, despite a longstanding use in Pacific nations, growing local film productions and key research carried out in Oceania key to the sub-discipline of visual anthropology. In the increasingly neo-liberal evaluation of academic outputs, the UK’s REF being one example, video research sits uneasily between the demands for text based research outputs and potential research impact.
Through juxtaposing the vernacular use of video in Tonga with how anthropologists and anthropological research are valued in Tonga, this paper explores how video can be re-evaluated as a vital research tool, a vehicle of collaboration and epistemologically sensitive mode of representation. One very influential synthesis of cultural, political and economic theories of value define it ‘as the way in which actions becomes meaningful to the actor by being incorporated in some larger, social totality’ (Graeber 2001: xii). Through reflections on video production in Tonga, and analysis of the reception of several video productions in Tonga and overseas, I offer ethnographically developed criteria for the analytic, collaborative and reflexive value of video. Collaborative video production can claim to contribute to research impact, stand as valid research output in its own right and be of local value.

John Frum : He will come back… in 3D-HD

Marc Tabani (CNRS - Centre National pour la Recherche Scientifique)

Black men’s mysteries have frequently been a windfall for the media industry and especially for western film-makers. Hidden rituals, secret cults and other Heart-of-Darkness themes are at the heart of the production of ethno-fiction films. Footages like those recorded by Jean Rouch for the making of “Les Maîtres fous” are much rarer. The “cinema-vérité” finds its own methodological limits in capturing and then revealing esoteric ethnographies.
On the island of Tanna, however, messianic beliefs about the extra-ordinary figure of John Frum, have attracted successive generations of film-makers. Almost all of them have focused on a particular set of uncommon indigenous myths and rites, depicted in a phantasmal way, as a remarkable expression of the weird South Pacific “cargo cult”. These films belong to two very different time periods: before and after the diffusion of digital video technologies; and before and after people in Tanna themselves became regular consumers, and sometimes even producers, of “John Frum cargo cult films” videos and clips.
A comparative analysis of the perspective of Western film makers and the reception of their movies by the Tannese public today can provide us with some relevant insights to understand local cultural impacts of universal filmic productions. As an emblematic part of global aesthetisation, the unlimited diffusion and reproduction of animated images stands more than ever for a privileged way to feed either new-age fantasies or millenarian expectations.

Osama bin Laden and the making of the West

Thorgeir Kolshus (Oslo Metropolitan University)

In the aftermath of 9/11, FBI’s ‘Wanted’-posters featuring Osama bin Laden in various guises were spread across the globe, even reaching the wall of the Post Office of Sola, the capitol of Vanuatu’s northernmost Torba province. To people on Mota island, these images of the man behind the attack on what since WWII had been the impervious Americans soon turned into a narrative of his shape-shifting capacities. This was, in its turn, linked both to the abilities of the sorcerers of nearby Maewo and to John Woo’s 1997 film Face/Off, featuring John Travolta changing faces with the comatose villain Nicholas Cage in order to avert a terrorist attack, which somebody had seen during a visit to the nearest town.
In this paper, I discuss how the fascination for Osama bin Laden’s capacities and the extraordinary appeal of the story of his ultimate demise speak of the role played by the imaginary in bridging the gaps between different levels of experience, and how the definite, the probable, and the unlikely are negotiated with reference to these levels of experience.

Representation as disaster: mapping islands, climate change and displacement in Oceania

Wolfgang Kempf (University of Goettingen)

Media representations of what climate change and sea level rise will mean for islands, or whole island states, in the Pacific usually play on the registers of impending doom, of a catastrophe in the making, of looming displacement. The media’s preference for alarmism and simplification is largely based on a combination of long-standing Western imaginings of Pacific islands on the one side and the economic imperative to produce marketable news on the other. Within this framework, three interwoven principles are primarily in play: insularity, concretion and alterity. These are basic building blocks in the discursive linking of climate change and Pacific islands. The manner in which Oceania is depicted in the atlas of climate change, based on a systematization of media sources, is central to my analysis. Four case studies of Pacific islands and/or island states, which in the context of media representations of climate change and sea level rise have risen to become globally circulated emblems of disaster, flight, and cultural loss, will serve to illustrate this narrative scheme. The media’s current practice of associating climate change with Pacific islands – so I conclude – is in many ways a disaster, since it vitiates any differentiated perspective on Oceania as a regional entity with its own historically and culturally specific positionings, problems, and potentials.

The concept of “Hispanic Oceania”

David Manzano (Spanish National High Research Council (CSIC))

In the middle of 19th century, the Spanish society popularized the term “Hispanic Oceania” (that is to say Philippines, Marianas and Caroline Islands) to defend their own national rights over the west basin of the Pacific. Spanish people assumed with this concept the end of the “Spanish Lake” and they began to keep them attention to the Micronesia due the influence of the colonization. For this reason in 1885 Spanish people demanding the war versus Germany when it tried to occupy Yap. After this incident, Spain occupied the Carolines islands (nowadays Pelew islands and State Federated of Micronesia States) from 1886-1899. With the end of the colonization, Spanish people have declined them interesting for this land. In fact many Iberia historians are introducing the Marianas and Carolines islands over the Hispano-Asia concept and few people can recognized this land in a geographical map.
The main goal of this paper is approaching to the concept of “Hispanic Oceanic”. How this concept is created for the influence of the colonialism and how Spaniards mind maps have assumed the Micronesia after the domination of them State.

Hierarchy, Secrecy, and Dialectics: The Trobriand Paramount Chiefship and Social Organisation Revisited

Patrick Glass (Pestalozzi International Village Trust)

Malinowski described the Tabalu of Omarakana as the Trobriand 'Paramount Chief'. Gluckman and Cunnison dismissed this description as ‘…well on the way to becoming social anthropology’s Piltdown Man’ - far removed from his African counterpart - though seemingly the most influential Trobriander in traditional times (1962). Sahlins put Malinowski’s contention in Pacific perspective: the Trobriand case is anomalous. How could the Trobriands - which are low-lying coral islands - have an hierarchical political system? Such systems are usually associated with the High Islands of Polynesia - not Melanesia (1963). However, discussions of Trobriand Chiefship since have largely neglected the belief system.

Dumont observed that hierarchy implies divinity (1970). To understand traditional Trobriand social organisation the Divinity (Topileta) and the sacred have to be factored in (Glass 1986, 1988, 1996). Secrecy was vital to the belief system, and secrecy is tied to - and is the essence of - aristocratic social orders (Simmel 1906). Lepani Watson corrected Malinowski on the respective Permanent Powers of the two leading traditional Chiefs - the Toliwaga (War Chief) who opposed the Tabalu (Fertility Chief) (1956). The Chiefs’ powers were always tested on Duguveusa, the customary battlefield, in Kiriwina’s northern centre.

The Trobrianders strongly differentiated themselves from the South Massim by being non-cannibal, hierarchical - and to outsiders - ‘ignorant of paternity’, and notoriously cowardly (Monckton 1921). Their secret fertility cult of reincarnation in Tuma was not to be shared with cannibal neighbours. They had to trade with them - because of the regular draughts (Austen 1945) - and the Kula was really a substitute for war, which led to the ‘marriage' of objects, not people. For traditional Trobrianders, warfare was internal, seasonal, and generally orderly on Duguveusa. Battles were fought with remarkable courage there by tokai (commoners) who also got their reward in Tuma. The logic of the system is explored to answer the question: what were the Trobriands really all about in 1890, pre-contact?

Narratives of Kanak Identity in New Caledonia represented as an articulated ensemble. Theoretical Issues in synchronic approach with diachronic aim

Junko Edo (Kyorin University)

In New Caledonia annexed by France in 1853, its decolonization movement began at the end of the 1960s by the Melanesian students who paradoxically adopted the derogatory term, ‘Canaque’ for Melanesians as their identity and made the ‘revendication de l’identité kanak’ (Kanak identity claim) in their independence movement. I have been doing research on Kanak identity over many years by collecting discourses of local people, since identity does not exist as the real entity, but is imagined in the mind of people and asserted in discursive practices. To conclude this research, I have written a book in Japanese based on the analysis of such discourses transcribed as massive texts. This is published in Japan in February (2015) as ‘Narratives of Kanak Identity’. The main purpose of the book is to see diachronically how Kanak claim their identity and struggle to recover their rights in their decolonization movement and how they achieve their rights through the periods of Matignon Accords and the present Noumea Accord concluded among Indepéndantists, loyalists and France in 1988 and 1998. However, the problematics of this diachronic aim is that it has to take synchronic approach as a methodology, because in the relation between identity and discourse, Kanak identity is inseparably knotted on the dimensions of nation, community and culture. Therefore, the book is the representation of the indigenous identity as an articulated ensemble of three narratives: narrative of nation, of community and of culture as a trio. In other words, Kanak identity emerged from the paradigm of nation in the historical context of decolonization struggle, articulating traditional community based on their clan and cultural community on their ethnicity. With the narrative of community as political and cultural roots, the narrative of nation and that of culture are linked each other through political and cultural routes. This approach not only makes the book voluminous but also raises such theoretical issues as discourse, identity, representations and articulation.
In relation to the diachronic aim of the narratives of Kanak identity, I would like to present some theoretical issues I dealt with in this synchronic approach.

The contemporary Hawaiian schools and Hawaiian based education promoting culture and spirituality

Mette Ramstad (Østfold University College)

Mette Ramstad, Ass. Prof. in Science of Religion,
Østfold University College, Halden, Norway.

Title:
The contemporary Hawaiian schools and Hawaiian based education promoting culture and spirituality.

Research aims:
What are the various types of Hawaiian education and schools today?
How and in what subjects is Hawaiian spirituality promoted in the Hawaiian schools?
What are the central elements in Hawaiian spirituality promoted in the Hawaiian schools?
Is Hawaiian spirituality implemented by teachers as a cultural practice package?

Methodology framework:
Observations from schools with pupils and teachers. Interviews with teachers, pupils, and school leaders. Analysis of school plans, pedagogical models, research on pupils.

Findings:
Hawaiian Spirituality is communicated as a part of the Hawaiian cultural heritage in interdisciplinary topics and joint events in schools. It is also taught in social studies, music, hula dance, arts and crafts, biology, physical education and Hawaiian language. Religion is not a subject in the public schools. The “problem” of how to combine indigenous peoples' right to express traditional spiritual faith as part of cultural practice in public or private Christian schools that do not allow it officially, was repeatedly highlighted during my fieldwork visits to the various types of Hawaiian schools. Many Hawaiians are concerned with preserving and disseminating the Hawaiian heritage and see Hawaiians as a threatened and oppressed minority.
Much of Hawaiians culture and school debates and strategies, are linked to political activism and struggles for indigenous rights against what they believe is American and Oriental oppressive colonialism.
Research in Hawaii indicates that young Hawaiians are among the weakest pupils, and that their school performance is linked to social and economic problems. Rankings of schools based on testing of the core subjects English and mathematics has been contested. Success is based on the core subjects, and it is a criterion for funding. Some researchers believe Hawaiian children succeed better in academic subjects by boosting their dignity through a Hawaiian based education. New research suggests that some of the alternative Hawaiian schools have improved pupils socially and academically. Many Hawaiians are also connected to the spiritual values of Hawaiian Christianity.
Some schools had collective singing of Christian songs and common prayers.
Traditional singing with the names of Hawaiian gods, were conducted by pupils at enactments at the traditional harvest festival Makahiki with traditional sports competitions at a school. Some high school pupils spoke with enthusiasm about spiritual prayer and song in relation to work in the school garden. The combination of gardening plants and traditional prayers was witnessed several times.

Goal:Increase awareness for indigenous people’s education and rights to include religion as cultural heritage.