THE CENTRE FOR PACIFIC STUDIES: ANNUAL REPORT, 1994-95
In its fourth year of operation the Centre for Pacific Studies has continued to strengthen its anchoring within the University of Nijmegen, particularly within the Nijmegen Institute for Comparative Studies in Development and Cultural Change (NICCOS), as well as within the national research schools Center for Resource Studies for Human Development (CERES) and the Centre of Non-Western Studies (C.N.W.S.). In addition, the Centre has made preparations to safeguard its basis in the future. In spite of all the hard work, however, the worst case scenario of a major shake-up of universities in the Netherlands before the end of the millennium does not necessarily auger well for the prospect of a prosperous Centre for Pacific Studies.
1. Research Programme
The research projects of a great number of members of the Centre for Pacific Studies who are formally affiliated to the University of Nijmegen, particularly those working within the Faculty of Social Sciences and the Faculty of Arts, are embedded within the research programme of the Nijmegen Institute for Comparative Studies in Development and Cultural Change (NICCOS). Within the NICCOS research programme most Pacific projects are positioned within a sub-programme entitled 'The Politics and Symbolism of Identity Formation'. Over the past year this research programme has been reviewed and revised, which, in turn, has encouraged the research coordinator of the Centre for Pacific Studies to carry out an inventory of individual research projects concerning Oceania. The inventory reconfirmed that there is a great deal of overlap between the research interests of members of the Centre for Pacific Studies. These common interests have inspired the formulation of a research programme aimed at facilitating and improving internal communication and intellectual exchange. The research programme, including descriptions of all individual research projects, has appeared in the form of a brochure; the general description of the research programme appeared in Oceania Newsletter No. 14, July 1994, p. 10-12.
Many research projects of C.P.S. members are also embedded within the research schools Center for Resource Studies for Human Development (CERES), which was formally recognized by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in June 1994. Within this research school, however, the projects are part of clusters which are focussed not regionally, but thematically. Consequently, individual research projects of C.P.S. members are scattered over a number of different clusters. Most projects are, nevertheless, grouped together within the cluster entitled 'The Politics and Symbolism of Identity' (probably to be reorganised and renamed as 'Culture, Religion and Identity').
In addition to its formal connection with the research school CERES, the Centre for Pacific Studies is informally affiliated to the Centre of Non-Western Studies (C.N.W.S.) - CERES and C.N.W.S. have signed a bilateral memorandum of cooperation. For that reason, the Board of C.N.W.S. invited the Centre for Pacific Studies to submit one or more grant applications for research projects and/or programmes under its auspices to the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (N.W.O.). Two research proposals were submitted, entitled 'A Comparative Study of Ideology and Change of Socio-Political Organisation in Polynesia' and 'The Symbolic Dimension of Economic Forms of Exchange in New Guinea'. Unfortunately, however, none of the applications submitted by C.N.W.S. were awarded due to a lack of clarity about the responsibility for funding the projects and programmes of the increasing number of research schools in the Netherlands.
The reason why Board members of the Centre for Pacific Studies invested a great deal of time in the development of research programmes is, of course, to secure the operation of the Centre in the future. Given the unequal balance between tenured and temporary positions, it is necessary to take steps to ensure the continuation of the Centre's research programmes over the next five years and beyond. To that aim the Centre has recently decided to develop its own research programme and apply for funding directly to the Netherlands Foundation for the Advancement of Tropical Research (WOTRO). It has submitted an extensive outline of a proposal for a long-term research programme, provisionally entitled 'Social Change and Individual Agency: Between Culture and Context', and is hoping to be invited to submit a full proposal before September. The proposal is being developed in cooperation with the Department of Cultural Anthropology and Sociology of Development of the Free Univesity of Amsterdam and the Irian Cluster of Leiden University. If WOTRO rejects the initial proposal it will be submitted to other potential subsidizers.
2. Teaching Programme
The teaching programme of Pacific Studies has been largely the same as last year, except that the reading lists for the several courses have been updated - see the special brochure of the teaching programme for course details. Interest in the teaching programme on the Pacific has increased, although the number of students going on to complete their research assignment in the Pacific region is still not as high as we would like. The reasons for this must be sought, first, in the geographical distance between the Pacific and the Netherlands, which entails high costs when setting up a research project in the region. Second, there is a problem with the optional character of most courses of the Pacific teaching programme. It is aimed at reinforcing the position of Pacific Studies within the anthropology curriculum, among other things, by re-scheduling a number of courses and thus reducing the competition with other regionally oriented courses, as well as by enhancing the possibilities for doing a research assignment on the Pacific, both in the region and in the Netherlands. Concerning the latter, projects based on research of literature on a certain topic in relation to a research programme are being considered, while projects in local anthropological museums are also a real possibility.
3. Documentation
The Documentation Centre is now firmly established and the number of requests for information is increasing accordingly. The bibliographic database includes references to publications since 1992. The database will be updated continuously, while publications backdated to 1985 will gradually be entered. The bibliographic database of the Centre for Pacific Studies differs from other databases in that each entry includes an extensive number of keywords to enable students and researchers to search for recent publications in relation to their specific research interests. For that reason, too, it is hoped that in the future the database can be made publicly accessible on World Wide Web.
4. Oceania Newsletter and CPS Home Page on World Wide Web
The editor-in-chief of the Oceania Newsletter, Eric Venbrux, has unfortunately had to resign due to his change of employment (see below). This has resulted in a new set-up of the editorial team, which has now agreed to share the responsility for the Newsletter in general, but to circulate the final responsibility for the production process of each issue. The aim is to bring out two issues per year.
The electronic version of the Oceania Newsletter has been made available on World Wide Web by Fred Melssen, formerly a Research Associate at the C.P.S., since January 1995 re-appointed as Manager Electronic Information Services. Fred Melssen has designed a 'CPS Home Page' (address: http://www.kun.nl/cps/) containing information on the activities of the Centre for Pacific Studies, e.g. the seminar series, as well as all recent numbers of the Oceania Newsletter (Nos. 11-15). With this initiative the Centre for Pacific Studies is still firmly in the forefront of explorers in electronic data communication. Indeed, Fred Melssen deserves a special mention for his pioneering skills in electronic networking and above all for his services to Pacific Studies in the Netherlands.
The implication of the construction of a CPS Home Page on World Wide Web is that the configuration of CPS-L, the Electronic Discussion list of the Centre for Pacific Studies, has had to be adjusted. CPS-L is now designed only to distribute information regarding the question: "What is new in the CPS World Wide Web server?". CPS-L has also become an edited list, meaning that only C.P.S. Board members are able to release information on the list.
Given the scale of Pacific Studies in the Netherlands, the interest for the CPS Home Page on World Wide Web is, in our opinion, impressive: between March 3rd and 2nd June 1995 the page was accessed 505 times.
5. Seminar Series
This year the seminar series of the Centre for Pacific Studies, organised in cooperation with the Nijmegen Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology and the Anthropological Students' Union Quetzalcoatl, has been integrated with the Post-Fieldwork Research Seminar for Master Students (staff and students speaking in alternate weekly sessions). In addition, the time of the seminar sessions has been rescheduled; seminars are now held at lunch-time (hence the new name 'Brown Bag Seminar Series'). Although the new set-up appeared to work very well during the first semester, attendance decreased in the course of the second semester, possibly due to a different, less convivial room. This will be corrected in the organisation of the following series of seminars next year.
Speakers included PhD Students presenting pre- or post-fieldwork seminars, staff from the Department of Anthropology at Nijmegen University, and a number of guest-speakers both from the Netherlands and abroad, including Ingjerd Hoem (Oslo), Patricia Spyer (Amsterdam), Thomas Gibson (Rochester), Zdzislaw Mach (Krakow), Jet Bakels (Leiden), Chris Gregory (ANU) and Elizabeth Keating (UCLA).
6. Mini-Conference on the Concept 'Field of Anthropological Study'
On 29 August 1994 the Centre organized a workshop on the use of the concept Field of Anthropological Study in relation to New Guinea. The concept 'Field of Anthropological Study' has been developed by J.P.B. de Josselin de Jong and others, particularly at Leiden University, to facilitate inter-cultural comparison with a regional focus. The idea for the workshop at the Centre for Pacific Studies was derived from a provocative paper on the subject by Lex van der Leeden, who was a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for a period of three months. He argued that New Guinea, possibly even Melanesia at large, could well be regarded as a Field of Anthropological Study. Contributions to the workshop focussed not only on the ethnographic component of his discussion paper, but also on the epistemological presuppositions of the concept and the methodological implications for comparative research. The workshop was attended by fifteen people, ten of whom contributed a paper. Emeritus professor P.E. de Josselin de Jong from Leiden, who wrote some important articles on the merits of the concept Field of Anthropological Study for comparative research, contributed a paper but was unfortunately unable to attend. The papers and their presenters as well as other participants generated a lively debate on the topic. For a more extensive report on the workshop, written by Jan van Nieuwenhuijsen, see Oceania Newsletter No. 15, pp. 13-16.
7. C.P.S. and the European Society for Oceanists
On the occasion of the First European Colloquium on Pacific Studies organised by the C.P.S. in December 1992, the European Society for Oceanists (ESO) was set up. This organisation of mainly European scholars from a wide range of different disciplines who are interested in the Pacific held its next conference - the first under the ESO banner - in Basel, Switzerland, in December 1994. The C.P.S. was pleased to see that its initiative to organise a - foundation - conference has been followed up and led to the establishment of a professional organisation with currently 250 members. The conference in Basel was attended by nearly 200 people; 90 papers were presented in 10 different working sessions. Among the participants at the Basel conference were a large number of C.P.S. members. For a report of the ESO conference, see Oceania Newsletter, No. 15, pp. 23-5; p. 22 of the same issue contains more information on the ESO.
After the ESO conference the C.P.S. Board nominated two of its members for the Board of the ESO, Paul van der Grijp and Ton Otto, who have meanwhile been elected. They will be representing the 24 Dutch members of the ESO. Gunter Senft, also on the Board of the C.P.S., is one of the German representatives on the Board of the ESO.
8. Awards
Eric Venbrux has been offered a position as research fellow in the Department of Folklore at the P.J. Meertens Institute at Amsterdam. This position is for four days a week over a four year period, which enables Eric to continue to work on his post-doctoral project, entitled 'The Establishment of an Aboriginal Township (Rangku, Bathurst Island): A Study in Tiwi Politics', for one day a week. Eric has took up his new position as of 1 January 1995.
Janneke Hulsker has been awarded a PhD Research Fellowship for a period of four years by the Netherlands Organization for the Advancement of Tropical Research. The title of her research project reads: 'Aboriginal Organizations and the Construction of Aboriginality in Redfern, Sydney'. Janneke has took up her new position as of 1 May 1995.