CONFERENCES AND SEMINARS
European Colloquium on Pacific Studies
Transformation and Tradition in the South Pacific
On 18 and 19 December 1992 the Centre for Pacific Studies in Nijmegen will host the first European Colloquium on Pacific Studies. This meeting is intended as a (not too formally organised) forum for the exchange of ideas and information on research projects concerning the South Pacific. We hope that this initiative may stimulate further exchange and research cooperation in the field.
The Centre for Pacific Studies is an association of scholars from various disciplines interested in the study of Oceania (including Australia) and Southeast Asia. Its aim is to promote general and applied research concerning the region and to provide opportunities for training, education and the exchange of information.
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Europe and the South Pacific
Within the Netherlands the Centre for Pacific Studies has a special responsibility for the promotion of Oceanic studies as a result of national agreements within the discipline of cultural anthropology. We define Oceania as including the South Pacific Islands, Papua New Guinea, Irian Jaya, Australia and New Zealand.
In line with this specialisation we have chosen Oceania as the regional focus of the colloquium.
Our invitation for the colloquium is directed especially at European scholars. In the context of growing political and economic collaboration and even unification the Centre wants to promote chosen intellectual cooperation and exchange between European institutions and individuals.
The Majority of 'South Pacific' researchers, including many Europeans, are already internationally organised in the Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania. However, the organisation has its focus in North America and its yearly conferences take place in the US or (sometimes) in Canada. This makes regular participation a prohibitively costly affair for many European researchers.
European museums contain rich collections of Pacific artefacts and European archives provide abundant documentary evidence of Pacific history. This material invites research into social change, colonial history and the European representation of the Pacific. Perhaps Europeans have a special responsibility for making full use of these cultural resources.
Western research in the Pacific should, of course, be conducted in dialogue and in collaboration with Pacific Islanders. This is essential to decolonising Western scholarship concerning the region. The Centre for Pacific Studies will extend invitations to Pacific scholars and politicians to act as keynote speaker and it will make a special effort to facilitate participation by people from the region. In addition we welcome researchers from any other non-European country to take part in the colloquium. Prof. Roger M.`Keesing from McGill University has already agreed to be one of our keynote speakers.
General theme
The theme of the colloquium will be: Transformation and Tradition in the South Pacific. This theme is both relevant to contemporary developments in the Pacific and sufficiently broad in scope so as to cater for divergent research interests of participants. South Pacific states, and groups within them, are undergoing rapid and radical transformations of their political systems, their economies and their ecological environments as a result of independent statehood, secessionist and emancipatory movements, further penetration of multinationals and the world market, large-scale exploitation of natural resources etc. We want to address the question of the role of traditional cultures in this rapidly changing setting.
This central question can be further elaborated and clarified by pointing to the double meaning of the term tradition.
First, the term tradition is often used to refer to ideas, customs, institutions and objects which are supposed to be more or less continuous with the past, or, in other words, which are seen as handed down from generation to generation. Recently, there has been a growing awareness that these so-called traditions are far from static and unchanging. As a result of historically oriented studies it has become apparent that traditions are always in flux and react to colonial and other historical developments. The idea that tradition (or culture) is a creative and adaptive process has been forcefully formulated by Roy Wagner and may be labelled (using his words) as the "invention of culture".
Second, the term tradition may be used to point to those ideas, customs, institutions and objects which are self-consciously defined as traditional by members of a certain culture. The development of tradition as an indigenous category can perhaps be traced to colonial history as part of the mutual articulation of Western and indigenous cultures. Especially in the last two decades 'tradition' has become an important political symbol of Pacific populations and states (variously named as kastom, kastam, coutume, vakuvanua, fa'a Samoa, Maoritanga, aboriginality, the law, etc.). Its many meanings and uses has become the subject of an increasing body of Pacific scholarship (initiated by Keesing and Tonkinson, Linnekin, and Babadzan). The process of objectifying and politicising tradition may be labelled (following Hobsbawm and Ranger) the "invention of tradition".
Both the invention of culture and the invention of tradition are included in the central question of the colloquium concerning the role of tradition in the rapidly changing Pacific. This central theme may be developed around different aspects. We will specify eight possible sub-themes but want to stress that placing these items on the agenda of the colloquium will depend on the availability of papers.
Invitation
We invite papers on any of these sub-themes and also on subjects that cannot be neatly categorised within this framework. Rather than formally and rigidly applying a pre-conceived organisational scheme we want this colloquium to become a forum in which European and other researchers inform each other about their interests and activities concerning Oceania. Therefore we hope that many of you will be able to make your way to Nijmegen in December.
The Centre for Pacific Studies will bear the costs of organisation, photocopying, venue hire, etc. In addition it is applying for funds to assist those prospective participants who would otherwise be unable to attend. A limited number of participants may be billeted by members of the Centre while we will look for affordable accommodation for others.
Please let us know before 15 May if you are interested in participating in the colloquium. If possible, also indicate whether you are interesting in presenting a paper and, if so, on what subject. We will then contact you again in June with further information about the colloquium. Abstracts of papers are requested by the end of September. A complete collection of abstracts will be made available to all colloquium participants.
Send all correspondence to:
Dr. Ton Otto, Manager
Centre for Pacific Studies
PO Box 9108, 6500 HK Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Fax: +31-80-611945 * Tel.: +31-80-615468
E-mail: U211312@HNYKUN11
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Rock Art Conference
30 August - 4 September 1992, Cairns, Australia. Second Congress of the Australian Rock Art Association (AURA) and 1992 International Federation of Rock Art Organizations (IFRAO). This is the principal international event in palaeo-art studies and cognitive archaeology. More than 500 specialists are expected to attend the 11 symposia with about 200 papers. The following themes will be addressed: the post-stylistic era of rock art studies (Michael Lorblanchet & Paul Bahn); rock art and information exchange (Clair Smith); rock art as a teaching curriculum (Giriraj Kumar, Osaga Odak); Saharan rock art (Alfred Muzzolini); spatial organisation (Paul Faultstich, Paul Taçon), dating (Alan Watchman, Jack Stenbring), preservation (Andrew Thorn), and management (Graeme Ward, Bruce Ford) of rock art; ethics of rock art research (R.G. Bednarik, Mario Consens); and a general session. Contact: AURA, P.O. Box 216, Caulfield South Vic, 3162, Australia.
(Anthropology Today, December 1991)
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Nation, Identity, Gender in the Pacific
July, 17-19, 1992 - Canberra
This workshop will focus on the creation of national identities in the Pacific, and on the tensions between these and differences internal to nations - arising from regional ethnicities, gender, and migration. While there has been a mass of literature on nationalism in general or in other parts of the world, the topic has been relatively neglected in the Pacific - no doubt because the coherence of the nation state, and the elaboration of national identities, in countries such as Papua New Guinea are so fragile and undeveloped. It may, however, be this very instability that enables us to understand the topic in a new way.
We aim to raise both questions concerning comparisons within the region, and more basic issues concerning the cultural form of nationality, and its relations to modernity and postmodernity.
In the first category: How might nationalism being forged in independent states - (e.g. PNG, Vanuatu, the Solomons, Fiji, Tonga) be compared with those ethnonationalisms and indigenous identities within European settler states - (Hawaii, New Zealand, Australia) and those within French or American colonies - (New Caledonia, French Polynesia, Guam), What is the role of print and audio-visual media (cf. Benedict Anderson's theses), of education, and of changing patterns of consumption, in this process? How do national identities relate to new perceptions of subnational regional identity (Highlanders, Bougainvilleans, Papuans) and to supranational notions of Melanesian identity?
Secondly: to what extent is nationalism a radically modern and non-indigenous project? Are Oceanic notions of difference and identity redeployed and recontextualised in the context of the nation-state, or are these novel constructions of identity based on exclusively Western models (see Linnekin and Poyer 1990)? Is nationalism fundamentally the project of a Western educated political elite? How far does the nation transcend or supplant regional or local identities, in the multiple, nesting of identities appropriate to any person?
Does nationalism entail a novel reconstruction of the person? ("We have created Italy, now we need to create Italians"). If the person is ideally reconstituted as a citizen in the New Pacific nation-states, to what extent has this process been effective? Or, can these meaningfully be characterized as postmodern nations, that are constructed not around citizenship but only on the basis of shared consumption practices?
Finally the gendering of nations, and of indigenous and migrant identities, is at issue. To what extent have anticolonial movements and nations in the Pacific postulated masculine actors and citizens? (Cf. Pateman 1989 for the argument that the notionally gender neutral western citizen of political theory is canonically male). How far are the nation states of the Pacific dominated by men both in the sense of statistical representation and in their iconographies of tradition and national identity? To what extent are competing constructions of regional and national identity preferred by men and women?
Papers on these or related questions are invited. Contact Nicholas Thomas, Prehistory and Anthropology, The Faculties, ANU, GPO Box 4, Canberra ACT 2601 (fax: 06-2492711).
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Space in Language and Interaction in Aboriginal Australia
Convenors: Dr. John Haviland, Dr. Stephen Levinson
The Cognitive Anthropology Research Group at the Max-Planck- Institute for Psycholinguistics is proposing a workshop to be held during the Inaugural Australian Linguistic Institute in July 1992.
We will report on our research on the pervasive cardinal direction system of Guugu Yimidhirr (Paman, Cooktown area), and some of its interactive and ethnographic concomitants for people at the Hopevale Community. The Workshop will also bring together a larger group of linguists and anthropologists to marshall comparative data on related phenomena throughout the continent, and to set questions and priorities for future research.
The Australian workshop will complement research within the Max-Planck Cognitive Anthropology Research Group itself where we have been exploring linguistic and ethnographic aspects of spatial cognition, particularly in Meso-American, Dravidian and Austronesian languages. We expect that participants will consider topics ranging from the morphology, syntax and semantics of locational, directional and positional elements (including gesture) in Australian languages, to experimental methods for investigating spatial cognition, to the ethnography of space and orientation in quotidian and ritual activities. We plan to organize both short presentations of individual research, and workshop sessions where participants can jointly consider field material including video- and audio-taped interaction.
If you are interested in participating, please contact the convenors (whose addresses are noted below), indicating:
The convenors can be reached by airmail at:
Forschungsgruppe für Kognitive Anthropologie am Max-Planck-Institut
für Psycholinguistik,
PB 310
NL 6500 AH Nijmegen - the Netherlands
Or: tel. 31-80-521911 or 521604 (direct); Fax: 31-80-521-300; e-mail:
johnh@mpi.nl
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Ko Hoku Tofia: The Fifth THA Conference
The fifth Tongan History Association conference will be held in Laie, Hawai'i, from May 20 to 23, 1992. Brigham Young University is the hosting institution; Dr. Eric B. Shumway is the organizer.