European Society for Oceanists 2022 Conference

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Session Detail (parallel)

Encounters across difference in contemporary Oceania - Ideas, concepts and practices

Coordinator(s)

Sina Emde, Arno Pascht

Session presentation

In Oceania in a wide area of fields as diverse as environmentalism, development and humanitarianism, rights-based activism, resource extraction, neoliberal capitalism and even new religions, local actors and communities encounter seemingly global concepts, ideas and practices. Often these interventions are mediated by persons such as development and climate change experts, rights activists, national government and/or NGO employees. Actors may embrace these new concepts and models as a welcome agent of change, negotiate and assemble bits and pieces according to their needs or reject and disengage because these concepts and practices are perceived as part of a seemingly outside world of individuals, remote expert knowledge, and the global neoliberal economy in an unequal world. In every case, people actively encounter new concepts, models, and practices and shape their lifeworlds in these processes.
Scholars have analyzed these different dynamics as frictions (Tsing 2005), translations (Lewis and Mosse 2006), vernacularizations (Levitt and Merry 2009), or as encounters of ontologies (Blaser 2009). While earlier works often assumed a clear dichotomy between the local and the global, more recent works have shown how people’s (dis)engagement with these processes is historically, politically and economically contingent. Furthermore, people’s and communities’ prior experiences with interventions in different fields may have a major impact on how they deal with new encounters today (Emde and Scheer forthcoming).
In this panel we specifically invite papers that take into account people’s previous histories and experiences with implemented programmes, policies, projects or schemes and investigate how these impact on their willingness or resistance to engage with current concepts and practices often characterised as ‘global’. We are also interested in ethnographic insights into people’s negotiations of multiple encounters that happen simultaneously and/or even may be contradictory.

Paper submissions are closed

Accepted papers

Learning with the French army. Echoes of colonialism in French Polynesia

Claudia Ledderucci (Università degli Studi di Torino)

France’s fading military presence in the pacific contrasts with the development of new forms of soft power exerted through cultural and economic influences, as demonstrated by the Régiment du Service Militaire Adapté, or RSMA. The RSMA is an educational military program tailor-made for the struggling young indigenous population and was originally designed in 1961 to domesticate the population of the French Antilles en masse. Today, the RSMA exists in all French overseas territories and dependencies, with the only exception of Wallis and Futuna, and each branch is tailored to its specific location and population. In French Polynesia, a French overseas collectivity in the Pacific region, the first RSMA branch opened in 1989 in the Marquesas Islands and today it is present in all 4 archipelagoes. As advertised by the RSMA itself, the program is designed to teach the struggling indigenous youth a specific trade. As agents of change, French soldiers are today materially (co-)shaping Polynesians’ futures and aspirations. Notwithstanding their “paternalistic” role in which so easily they could fit as “modern colonizers”, I argue that the intimacies that take place inside the RSMA, and the surrounding communities, is perceived as the “best opportunity” for the Polynesian youth.

People in Motion: Nungons's interactions with the Administration and the Churches

Martin Soukup (Charles University)

The paper addresses the course of crucial events that disharmonize the life of the Nungon community, Papua New Guinea. The objective of the paper is the telling narrating the local history of local history through the lens of ‘disharmonizing’ events in the history of the Nungon. There are unwritten histories of human societies: witnesses of events passed away long ago. Their memories of what they witnessed are lost with them. But knowledge of them is living in collective memory. There are also rare written documents describing the course of the events. Two crucial events took place in the history of the community: 1. The villagers had to move from their customary land to a new site; 2. Villagers invited SDA to the area that was dominated and controlled by the Lutherans. The villagers claim that the relocation was ordered by a kiap and that the SDA missionary was invited because the community was without services for a quarter of a century as a consequence of Lutherans deciding to left the community. Archive documents read these two events alternatively. The relocation was probably ordered by a missionary and the Lutheran mission probably have never left the area. It does not mean that one interpretation is true and the second one false or vice versa.

Graun i laip (‘land is life’): an indigenous non-governmental organisation’s campaign against a Chinese mine in Papua New Guinea

I-Chang Kuo (The Australian National University)

This paper shows how the Bismarck-Ramu group (BRG), an indigenous non-governmental organisation (NGO) in Papua New Guinea (PNG), is altering landowners’ perceptions of development. Reviewing research on the mining industry in PNG, different scholars have argued for examining how NGOs use a succession of campaigns to draw attention to specific mining projects. This paper fills the empirical gap by showing BRG’s stance during the interaction between local landowners and a Chinese multinational mining company. This paper comprises three sections. The first section depicts the establishment of BRG because of the failure of the global conservation program during the 1990s. The second section describes BRG’s use of social media and collaboration with other institutions in the campaign against the Chinese company and the PNG government’s approval of a deep-sea tailings facility to deal with mining waste in the 2000s. Finally, the third section discusses how BRG staff members conduct training to enable participants to make differences between ‘traditional’ and Western development models and emphasise the critical role of land in preserving their livelihoods and cultural identities. This paper concludes by arguing that BRG has been critical to enabling locals to be self-reliant rather than depending on the government or outsiders to educate them on building their communities through their encounters with international investors.

When the relationship to scientists conditions the relationship to climate change - The case of Manihiki (Cook Islands)

David Glory (CREDO)

During the 1980s and 1990s, Manihiki (Cook Islands) was a major pearl producing area in the South Pacific. This lucrative activity has been the subject of a great deal of research by natural and social sciences, which have been interested in what some have called the « Manihiki miracle ». This constant presence of researchers for nearly two decades has shaped a special relationship between the islanders, science and scientists. Several episodes reported today by the islanders point to real tensions between the islanders and scientists in the management of certain diseases that the pearl farmers had to face. Those tensions have been exacerbated since the drop in production in the 2010s, which has led to a real desertion of all research on Manihiki. The islanders felt that the scientists were only interested in the economic benefits of pearl farming, and did not hesitate to abandon them the day the activity collapsed. It is in this context that, since the mid-2010s, the issue of climate change has emerged. As a scientific issue, from islanders’s viewpoint, it’s possible to observe what the recent history of relationships with scientists built up during the pearl farming boom period currently impacts on the way in which the Manihiki islanders perceive and appropriate the issue of climate change. In this paper, I would like to detail this link between the building of the relationship with scientists and the current reception of climate change.

Leadership Encounters across differences in contemporary Oceania

Robert Doktor (University of Hawaii at Manoa)

‘O le ala ‘i le pule ‘o le tautua:
Leadership Encounters across differences in contemporary Oceania …Robert Doktor

Scholars of Oceania have studied the phenomenon of the sometimes acceptance and sometimes resistance by actors in Oceania to some global concepts, ideas and practices. More ethnographic research is necessary to begin to develop a better understanding of the dynamics of these encounters (Emde and Scheer, forthcoming).

Perhaps insight into the dynamics of these phenomenon may be enhanced through ethnographic research of the anti-archetype of the phenomenon: The rejection of local wisdom by actors of global entities.

The following narrative explores the rejection by global actors of elements of wisdom found in concepts of Leadership held by some indigenous communities in Samoa, Hawaii and New Zealand.

Encountering Gender: (dis)engagements in the South-Pacific academic context

Domenica Gisella Calabrò (University of the South Pacific)

In the Pacific Island Countries region, the notion of gender has become pervasive, with development interventions, rights-based activism, environmentalism, academia and faith-based organizations attempting to address high rates of violence against women and gender disparities across society. This aligns institutions, organizations, communities and people with global discourse and action that have enshrined gender equality as a key sustainable development goal. Still, many experience gender as foreign, including related concepts like feminism and human rights. Some may pit that against ‘culture’ to express Indigenous resistance, and see gender equality as antagonist to sites like Christianity and rugby. In the context of development, some may read gender as a synonym of women, and perceive it as anti-men and anti-diversity; or may approach it as an ‘adjustment’ to access funding. Different forms of (dis)engagement with gender are visible within the Gender Studies programme at the University of the South Pacific, which developed as a response to civil society and government stakeholders’ call for academic support towards gender equality and with aspirations to be culturally and politically contingent. Students’ journeys into gender, interactions with local, regional and global stakeholders, and academic attempts towards decolonization are here merged to provide insights on the influence of people’s histories and experiences in their contemporary encounter with gender.

ʻIt's not a MSM, it's a buftaʼ: Making non-heteronormative identities and practices (in)visible in Vanuatu

Alice Servy (University of Strasbourg)

In Vanuatu, non-heteronormative practices and identities are relatively invisible in public space. However, national and transnational policies to combat HIV and other STIs are helping to increase their social visibility, through the dissemination of transnational public health categories, such as ʻmen who have sex with menʼ (ʻMSMʼ) and ʻtransgenderʼ (ʻTGʼ), and the development of prevention networks and actions for people categorized by these terms. This paper draws on twenty months of ethnographic research in Port Vila, the capital of Vanuatu, to analyse the identities and non-heteronormative practices that are (or are not) rendered visible by the use of ʻMSMʼ and ʻTGʼ and the social consequences of this (in)visibility for the people concerned. I argue that the visibility of the ʻMSMʼ and ʻTGʼ categories can constitute opportunities for those who identify or are identified in these categories by allowing them to access resources, services or solidarity networks. However, it can also constitute barriers by implying an increase in negative public attitudes towards them.

Live music, moral values and the spirit of independence in contemporary Vanuatu

Monika Stern (CNRS - Centre National pour la Recherche Scientifique)

Eric Wittersheim

Fest' Napuan is a popular music festival that has been held every year in Vanuatu since 1996. Based on a long-term ethnography of the festival, this paper describes the encounters and forms of mediation that have contributed to the development of this cultural event initiated by a small group of local artists and expatriates. Managed by a non-profit association and administered by a committee of volunteers, the festival constitutes a privileged point of observation to grasp how imported values, models and practices are (re)negotiated in order to shape this local event with a regional outreach. The Fest' Napuan is more than a festival: it is a space where the different worlds that make up the life of the capital, Port-Vila, unfold: major event for the local music industry, lever for tourism, broadcaster of ideas and values among young people, and place for radical political activism. By reinserting the festival into the longer history of popular music and political protest movements in Vanuatu since independence (1980), we will show how collectives and artistic expressions can shed light on the polysemy of people’s attitude towards politics, beyond the classical repertoires identified by political science and anthropology.

Ngyiampaa difference in contemporary Australia: Responses to NSW state cultural awareness training sessions from Ngyiampaa perspectives

Daniela Heil (University of Newcastle)

Ontological differences between non-Indigenous and Indigenous Australians, and the contemporary versions of historical constraints, displacement, resettlement and, in response, reconstructing contemporary versions of what it means to be a First Nation’s person in Australia have presented ongoing challenges for Ngyiampaa people in central-Western New South Wales (NSW). My paper draws attention to Ngyiampaa views of cultural awareness training sessions, initiated by the NSW state government, and intended for non-Indigenous Australians employed in the service sector to better serve First Nations people. Ngyiampaa people have continued to be invited to the sessions as well. The ethnographic examples focus on cultural awareness training and cultural competence sessions facilitated by the state health department. An issue that continues to persist is that these sessions are formulated by non-Indigenous policy makers who engage with First Nation perspectives and practices in their professional realms, and the prior engagements they have had with First Nations people. Drawing attention to the intersecting understandings and divergence of partial connections within the various encounters of the sessions, knowledge-based practices, and as those tropes continue to exceed each, they do consistently produce something else, too. While what constitutes the excess may be obscure to both non-Indigenous and First Nation participants in their engagements, yet it is also constitutive of it.