European Society for Oceanists 2022 Conference

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Session Detail (parallel)

Relational dynamics in the Indo-Pacific. Spaces, histories, ethnographies and comparisons

Coordinator(s)

Sophie Chave-Dartoen, Denis Monnerie, Jean-Marc Grave de

Session presentation

The history of the societies of the Indo-Pacific contradicts the limits drawn by Western geographers. Indonesian, Filipino and Oceanian societies are often linked by intersecting (pre)histories: voyages, migrations, networks of relationships, colonization, contemporary nations. These societies present common aspects including the importance of : antecedents/'origins', links to the land, sociological conceptions of the 'house' or the 'canoe', etc. which may, or not, be characterized as 'Austronesian'. They have developed and disseminated relational and connectionist practices and ideas. Thus the extension of relationships beyond Euro-American distinctions between the social and the environment, humans and non-humans, the living and the dead/ancestors/deities, social entities and beyond.
In this context, we will focus on the dynamics of relationalities and connectivities in, for instance:
- People as relational composites;
- Dynamics of exchange and circulation at local and wider levels;
- Mobilizations and inflections of world dynamics;
- Social entities which encompass their relationships within their world, conceptualized as cosmos;
- Adaptations to colonial and religious invasions and to globalization.
We invite participants to go beyond these suggestions and propose local or broader ethnographies of relational dynamics in Indo-Pacific societies and their relevant theorizations.
An important question is, to what extent are the contemporary (re)configurations of social logics and categories carried out - or not - in terms of relational dynamics, under what conditions, with regard to what principles? Have these societies retained their eminently dynamic relational and connectivist dimensions? Which ones are being emphasized, inflected - or disappearing? What happens to the extensions of relationships not predicated on Euro-american distinctions? All of this has implications for responses to changes in so-called 'natural' resources and climate, market and political pressures.

Paper submissions are closed

Accepted papers

Sociocosmic worlds: relational universes, plurality of forms of circulation and the importance of performance

Sophie Chave-Dartoen (Université de Bordeaux)

D. de Coppet defined the concept of "socio-cosmic configurations" to characterise forms of holism that he identified in Pacific societies bearing traces of Austronesian origins. He lists important aspects, including the relational and contextual dimensions of categories such as plants, pigs, humans, shell money; the unity of the ritual system that permanently transforms the entities of the cosmos by reorganising their components; the importance of Life and of its renewal. In this perspective, the relational dimension of local ontologies takes precedence over the substantivist ones, as they have been privileged both by philosophy throughout its development and by Western common sense. This is, in any case, what tends to show the ethnography of the ceremonial circulations and of the ritual system in Wallis, a society from Western Polynesia where social dynamics are in perpetual recomposition and nonetheless obey fundamental values and structuring logics. Thus, a corollary of the eminently relational dimension of this society is the central value of seniority and its essential role in the performance of building and evaluating relationships. All of this presupposes specific theories on the effectiveness of actions and, more generally, semiotic processes that deserve to be identified and analysed.

Partibility Meets Divinity (and vice-versa): At Last, a Synthesis of Strathern and Sahlins

Mark Mosko (Australian National University)

For the past several decades, theoretical innovations and discourses regarding Pacific people’s indigenous socialities and cultural transformations have been notably dominated by two of anthropology’s modern giants, Marilyn Strathern and Marshall Sahlins. Despite common rootedness in classical anthropological theory, their post-structuralist writings have stood in stubborn tension, if not strong contrast, regarding a number of critical conceptual foci: personhood, kinship and gender, hierarchy, ritual agency, historical process, etc. In this paper, drawing on recent research among Trobriand Islanders, I illustrate a number of key parameters by which, through the notion of Oceanic sacrifice as iconic of both the partibility of persons and the divinity of kingly/chiefly meta-persons, Strathern’s and Sahlins’s thinking effectively converge.

Diachrony of an object and comparative approach: the case of Javanese initiation in the Ausronesian scope

Jean-Marc de Grave (Université d'Aix-Marseille)

Javanese kanuragan ritual initiation, as it has been maintained until now, is part of a marked Autronesian framework with characteristics such as upstream/downstream, inside/outside, centre/periphery oppositions and the strong valorisation of seniority, or even of the placenta. Such conceptions have been maintained by the persistence of rites and cults that have nothing to do with the Indianisation and Islamisation of the island. Conversely, the kanuragan has remained a reference point for groups influenced by these external ideologies, including the secularised nationalists who have marked post-colonial and contemporary Indonesia with a complex ideology, with an open integrative vocation, but whose limits are marked by the anti-communist massacres (1965), the resurgence of radical Islam after the economic and political crisis of 1997-98, and the very serious environmental crisis that has persisted since the end of the totalitarian Suharto regime during the nitenies. Through the politics and social events of the 1950s to the present, the kanuragan has become fragmented and specialised in sports, culturo-patrimonial and school or schooling forms. Through these elements, I would like to probe the heuristic character of the concept of sociocosmics, and in so doing address the question of perspective-taking – that is, the question of implicit or explicit points of view induced by the analysis – in order to elaborate the reasoned comparison.

Recalibrating official narratives. Memories and materialities of Rapanui history through Oceania and Chilean connections

Diego Muñoz ( Social and Cultural Anthropology)

In the last thirty years, Rapanui political leaders and artists have been revisiting social memories and creating new materialities to build their own version of the history with Chile. They have built monuments, created a flag, and composed an anthem to fertilize a national rhetoric and symbolism connected to Oceania. These materialities contribute to placing the Rapanui version of history at the center of the public space.

In this paper, I will focus on three examples of this process of reclaiming history. First, I will zoom on the monuments. This refers to the construction and installation of commemorative sculptures of Rapanui heroes positioned close to those of Chilean heroes. Second, I will discuss ‘the power of the flag’. This concerns the omnipresence of the Rapanui flag in public offices and Chilean republican ceremonies. Finally, I will examine the new understanding of sovereignty. Here, I will refer to the current controversy about the Chilean version of the cession of sovereignty that the Rapanui chiefs are said to have made in 1888. The Rapanui version, supported by the rediscovery of the bilingual treaty in 2002 and by a national and pan Polynesian rhetoric, differs on fundamental points concerning authority, government, and land ownership. The invocation of foundational memories which connect Rapanui to Oceania and their current material manifestations are central components of their own historical narrative vis-à-vis the Chilean version.

Ordinary sociability and a sense of belonging in a peri-urban neighborhood in New Caledonia: a social cohesion built from below?

Benoît Carteron (Université d'Angers)

In New Caledonia, the political conflict between two opposing tendencies has become a real structure of representation and action, permanently counteracting social cohesion and the possibility for the country to move towards a possible "national" unity. This conflict intersects with separations between distant cultural universes considered incompatible, competing material interests and economic and social inequalities.
Based on an ethnographic study about ordinary sociability in a peri-urban neighborhood of the Grand Nouméa, I will examine the way to invest habitat and social relations in the daily life of the inhabitants, which are from multiple origins and mainly of modest conditions. A local society has been unified by common characteristics and ideals that counteract the divisive tendencies that constitute family retreat, cultural gaps and political tensions inherent to the country. As an intermediary between the "bush" and the city, this neighborhood is experienced as emblematic of a specifically Caledonian way of life, which is based on rural and Oceanic references.
"Coculturation" contribute to the conception of the country in its unity and cohesion, but they are clashed with the complexity of New Caledonia: interbreeding, convergence of lifestyles and cultural recognition on one hand,political status quo on the other hand. The expression of the feeling of belonging thus highlight the persistence of two opposing national perspectives and a Kanak/no Kanak boundary.

Racism, Gambling and Capitalism in Papua New Guinea

Anthony Pickles (University of Birmingham)

In colonial Papua & New Guinea, access to gambling was racialised through discriminatory that manifested spatially. Whites gambled freely at public horse race tracks, bridge parties and raffles at conspicuous hotels while Papua New Guinean and Chinese gambling happened in clandestine ‘dens’ that were subject to raids, arrest, fine and imprisonment. Today, gambling remains divided between expensive and exclusive hotels and clubs where slot machines are a high-price locale of apparent racial equality on the one hand, and small scale gambling, usually between Papua New Guineans, at the back of markets, on street corners and under houses on the other. The latter is tolerated so long as it is hidden, with police attacks still common. Gambling that generates profits (often for non-Papua New Guineans) and state revenue and provides contexts where businessmen and politicians may meet are encouraged, while small-scale gambling that subverts the equation between work and money and generates no profits is discouraged. This paper investigates how a focus on economic phenomena that cuts across racial divisions can lay bare processes of racialisation, and the relationship between racism and the interests of capital.

The dynamic potential of the sociocosmic approach

Denis Monnerie (Université de Strasbourg)

Rooted in the work of the great Dutch theoretician of anthropology Van Wouden the sociocosmic approach influenced the Leiden school of anthropology in its research on structural regularities, which for colonial reasons were discovered mostly in Indonesia. In the 1980's, the Leiden-Paris collaboration resulted in an expansion of this approach towards another part of the Austronesian speaking world: Oceania. I suggest that beyond the discovery of structural features, the flexibility and adaptability of the sociocosmic approach can sustain new research concerning the dynamics concerning social entities and collectives in their intricate relations and connections to their environment and universe.
My case study will concern the north of Kanaky New-Caledonia where one observes dynamic synchronisations and scansions of the practices and conceptions relating to plant and animal behaviour, horticulture and the performance of the first yam ceremony. The dynamic interactions of phenology and horticultural or ceremonial processes constitute one of the dynamics of the weaving of the social with the universe. They constitute flows which define, mix, blur and redefine sociocosmic relations, while challenging the anthropologist's own human/non human distinctions and priorities. Such data provide anthropology with precise indications on the kind of relations and connections that are practically and conceptually privileged in this particular sector of the Kanak sociocosmic world.