In this Issue:
Centre
Launch
The Samoan High Commissioner to Australia, HE Leiataua Dr Kilifoti
Eteuati, will officially launch the newly-established Centre for
the Contemporary Pacific at the Chancelry Building of the ANU on 10
December.
Brij V. Lal, a professor of history in the Research School of
Pacific and Asian Studies at the ANU, has been appointed foundation
head of the Centre.
The Centre succeeds and will build on the work of the Pacific
Islands Liaison Centre. Its objectives include:
Developing and promoting Pacific studies within the Australian
National University;
Developing links with government agencies, institutions and
universities within Australia and the Pacific region and acting as
a focal point for their access to Pacific studies at the ANU;
Facilitating contact and communication between Pacific scholars
in Australia and elsewhere through active cooperation with other
centres and institutes for Pacific studies;
Undertaking an outreach role in the Pacific region on behalf of
the ANU and more generally for Pacific studies within
Australia.
The Centre aims to achieve these objectives by establishing
visiting fellowships for senior Pacific Island public service
leaders and scholars, collaborative projects with island
universities and island scholars in humanities and the social
sciences, and through annual workshops on topical issues and
concerns in the contemporary Pacific.
The Samoan High Commissioner is no stranger to the ANU. He holds
a PhD degree from the university as well as an MA in Political
Science and a LLB from the University of Auckland. Before his
present assignment, he was Secretary to Government and Prime
Minister's Department of Samoa; Founding Director of the Oceans
Resources Management Programme at USP, Chairman of Forum Fisheries
Committee (governing body of the Forum Fisheries Agency); Chairman
of SOPAC (principal regional body for offshore mineral
prospecting); and Chairman of negotiations for the SPREP
Convention.
Dr Eteuati will spend part of 1999 as a Visiting Fellow in the
Division of Pacific and Asian History as well as the Centre, to
work on a book on developments in Samoa since independence in
1962.
Professor Lal is well known to Pacific scholars. His latest
book, Another Way: The Politics of Constitutional Reform in
Post-Coup Fiji, will be published later this year by the Asia
Pacific Press of the National Centre for Development Studies.
Earlier this year, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Fiji
by Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, President of the Republic of the Fiji
Islands, for his contribution to the Fiji Constitution Review
Commission.
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December Workshop
'Is the State an alien imposition on Pacific Island Societies?' is
the title of this year's annual workshop on Pacific History that
the Centre will co-host with the Division of Pacific and Asian
History at the ANU from 10-12 December. The topic is provoked by an
apparent mis-match between Pacific States and Societies. Most
Polynesians acknowledge a State but spread their families beyond
it; while most Melanesians live within the State but acknowledge it
very selectively. The Workshop hopes to analyse this mis-match, and
some of the consequences. It is divided into two sections.
Section A (not finalised) includes:
Elizabeth Wood-Ellem, 'Tonga: Nation, Family or Society?'
Brij V. Lal, 'Ethnicity, Nation-building and the Post-colonial
State.'
Michael Hess, 'Unions, States and Societies.'
Donald Denoon, 'The invention of Papua New Guinea.'
Bronwen Douglas, 'Women, churches and citizenship.'
Anthony Regan, 'Perspectives on State and Society in
Melanesia.'
Sinclair Dinnen, 'Raskols and Citizens.'
Bill Standish, 'Linking State and Society in Simbu: Game, Set and
Mismatch.'
Clive Moore, 'What About the Melanesian Diaspora?'
Kalisa Alexeyef, 'What it means to be a Cook Islander.'
Other participants and presenters will include Tarcisius
Kabutaulaka, Hank Nelson, Kilifoti Eteuati, Michael Morgan, Adrian
Muckle, Graham Hassall, Dorothy Shineberg, Margaret Jolly, Kerry
Howe, Deryck Scarr, Greg Fry, and Ruth Spriggs.
Section B is complete:
Barrie Macdonald, 'King Lear at Christmas: 'giving away' colonial
possessions.'
Geoff Gray, 'A desire to improve their conditions: EWP Chinnery in
New Guinea and the Northern Territory.
Peter Elder, 'The Inner Logic of Dispossession: Land Acquisition in
Northern Territory and Papua.'
Roger Thompson, 'Australian Administrators of Papua, New Guinea and
Nauru from the 1920s to the 1970s.'
J. Mettam, 'Australia and its 'colonies': The years of
Proto-Imperialism.'
Ian Campbell, 'The establishment of an Administrative Training
School for Staff for PNG service.'
H. Wright, 'Economic or Political Development: the broader
development context of early thinking on Native Local Government
Councils in Papua New Guinea.'
R. Hall, Australia in Antarctica.'
The convenors cheerfully say, 'As usual, no fees, no
registration, and precious little funding.'
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Centre
Visitors
The Centre will have some noted visitors in the near future. They
include:
- Sir Peter Kenilorea, former Solomon Islands Prime
Minister, who will attend the Ombudsmen Workshop and will be
attached to the Centre as its Pacific Islands Visitor. Sir Peter
will be available for informal meetings with Pacific scholars.
- Professor KR Howe, Pacific historian at Massey's
Auckland campus, who will also be a Visiting Fellow in the Division
of Pacific and Asian History for a month beginning November 16.
Kerry will spend his time revising the MacMillan Brown Lectures he
delivered at Massey last year.
- Dr Doug Munro, from the University of the South
Pacific, will be a Centre Visitor over Christmas to complete a
chapter for a book on the recent financial history of Fiji as well
as pursue his long-term but much-stalled project, an intellectual
biography of Jim Davidson.
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RSPAS Signs
General Agreement
On 15 October, RSPAS Acting Director James Fox signed a 'General
Agreement for Scholarly Collaboration' between RSPAS and the
National University of Samoa (represented by its Vice Chancellor
Magele Mauiliu Magele). The areas of cooperation between the two
institutions will include, subject to mutual consent, exchanges of
faculty and research personnel, joint research projects, assistance
to graduate students, and exchange of publications, material and
information. The RSPAS undertook to facilitate and coordinate the
involvement of other parts of the ANU in such collaborative
activities. The Agreement is for five years.
A similar agreement was signed by ANU Vice Chancellor Deane
Terrell with the French University at Noumea, which was represented
by the well known French scholar of the Pacific Islands, Paul de
Deckker.
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Workshop On
Agricultural Intensification
The Mapping Agricultural Systems Project and the Resource
Management Project hosted a joint 3-day workshop on agricultural
intensification in PNG at the ANU, 4-6 November. The workshop
brought together many of the leading scholars in the field to
generate fresh understanding of the causes and processes of
agricultural change in the region. Keynote speakers are Glenn Stone
(Washington University, St Louis), and Harold Brookfield (ANU).
William Clarke, an influential figure in the field, was among the
participants. Workshop proceedings will be published next
year.
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State, Society And Governance In Melanesia Project
Workshops
Women, Christians, Citizens: Being Female in Melanesia
Today
Convenor: Bronwen Douglas
Venue: Sorrento, Victoria
Date: 11-13 November
Attended by participants from Kanaky, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu,
Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, and Australia, the Workshop will
have sessions on 'Women, Custom and Christianity,' 'Women, Crisis
and Christianity,' 'Christianising Melanesian Women,' 'Women and
Modernity', 'Women and Christianity,' and 'Women, Change and
Empowerment.'
Evaluating Roles of Melanesian Ombudsmen and Leadership
Codes
Convenor: Anthony Regan
Venue: ANU
Dates: 6-10 November
This Workshop, which is partly funded by the Centre for
Democratic Institutions at ANU, will examine issues of
accountability and governance in the Pacific, focusing on assessing
the performance of the Ombudsmen and Leadership Codes. Topics will
include Corruption and Leadership, the Impact of the Public Sector
Reform, and the Efficacy of Constitutional Protections for Key
Accountability Institutions. Ombudsmen from PNG, Solomon Islands
and Samoa will be among the participants.
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ANU
Retirements
Michael Young
Michael Young will leave ANU in December but will continue his
association with the Department of Anthropology as a Visiting
Fellow. His colleagues will be able to monitor his travels in the
footsteps of Malinowski, and the progress on his biography of
him.
Michael has been involved with the department almost from its
inception. After graduating with a BA and MA from University
College London, he came to the ANU where he completed his PhD in
1969. It was published as the first of his many books, under the
title, Fighting With Food: Leadership, Values and Social
Control in a Massim Society. In 1974, after a brief period as
a lecturer in Anthropology at Cambridge, he returned to Canberra as
a Fellow, to continue the ANU tradition of distinguished research
on Melanesia. Promoted to Senior Fellow in 1983, Michael continued
his work in the Massim area while carrying out fieldwork in
Vanuatu. Increasingly, he became drawn to the life of Malinowski,
as a result of his work in the Massim, editing Malinowski's field
diaries, embarking on the biography and (most recently) publishing
a volume of his photographs.
Besides his books, Michael has supervised many PhD scholars,
including Epeli Hau'ofa, Grant McCall, Gill Herdt, Daryl Feil,
James Weiner, Martha Macintyre and Linus Digim'Rina. Suzane
Kuehling is his most recent student. Michael edited the
Canberra Anthropology for 20 years while also serving on
the Editorial Board of The Journal of Pacific History.
(Adapted from a contribution by Kathy Robinson).
RG Ward
Gerry Ward, Director of the Research School of Pacific Studies from
1980 to 1993, will retire at the end of this year. But, he says, he
has no intention of retiring. He came to Canberra to assume the
Chair of Human Geography at the University in 1971 after being
Foundation Professor of Human Geography at UPNG. Here are excerpts
from an informal interview he gave to Talanoa.
Talanoa: What brought you to Pacific Human Geography? Who
were some formative influences on your early career?
RGW: Pacific was very important at Auckland (under Kenneth
Cumberland) where I did my undergraduate. In 1955, I completed an
MA and was about to embark on a secondary school teaching career
when an unexpected vacancy in the Geography Department occurred,
and I was offered a one-year junior lectureship to teach
cartography! One thing led to another. I went to Samoa for
fieldwork in 1956, by sea in the Tofua, via Fiji, Niue and
American Samoa. A great introduction to the region. I enrolled to
do a PhD as a staff candidate at Auckland, and started fieldwork on
land use in Fiji in 1958. But the enrolment was changed to London
when I went there, at the invitation of HC Darby, to use the
resources of the Colonial Office Library and other
repositories.
As you will have gathered, luck has played a great part in my
career. Another key influence was the time I spent as foundation
professor in UPNG, living in the Pacific, meeting a wide range of
Pacific Islanders, working with them on a daily basis, to get to
know Melanesia, and become, in some ways at least, a part of the
Pacific. I mean, this was not an experience that I could ever get
from Auckland, London, or even Canberra!
Talanoa: It's almost 30 years now since you went to the
Pacific. A time of great change.
RGW: Yes, indeed. The most obvious and interesting changes in
the region have been those associated with the transition from
colonies to independence. And the associated social and educational
changes that have contributed to the process. To have been
associated with this transformation through teaching at UPNG was
exciting. I have also greatly enjoyed my association with NUS and
USP, having shared a little in the transformation of Pacific
research.
For the parts of the Pacific in which I have worked, the
diaspora to the Pacific rim countries (and beyond) is one of the
most significant features of recent years, with all it means for
issues of statehood, identity, nationhood, the transnational
household economies; we are talking about the globalization of
Pacific peoples.
Talanoa: You have mentioned your association with PNG. Some
interesting developments there in recent years.
RGW: I have been away from PNG for a while, so I 'll avoid that
one. But if you pushed me, I'd have to say that the deterioration
of the state and governance after a start full of promise has been
a cause for great sadness. I don't know where the blame lies in the
failure to create a new civic and state morality to replace the
'traditional' ones of tribal society.
Talanoa: What would you consider some of the highlights -
and lowlights - of your tenure as a Human Geographer
here?
RGW: Highlights and lowlights! Not too many of the latter, but
several of the former! In terms of research highlights, I'd have to
say the three projects involved in producing The Settlement of
Polynesia: a computer simulation; South Pacific
Agriculture; choices and constraints; and Land, Custom and
Practice in the South Pacific. All three are multi-authored
books, and the highlights came from the interest and pleasure in
working very closely with colleagues from several disciplines.
Talanoa: What about changes at the ANU in recent
years!
RGW: Let me leave this issue aside for the moment!
Talanoa: Post-retirement plans?
RGW: Post-retirement? On the research and writing side, to tidy
up material left on the back burner for far too long. At a larger
scale, I want to explore the whole notion of distance, and its
partner, isolation, in the Pacific Island context. But I also want
to think and write about some more personal themes and topics
(outside the School's mandate) relating to the Taupo country of New
Zealand to which I still have a strong attachment.
Talanoa: What advice would you give to some young student
starting on his or her Pacific voyage now?
RGW: My one piece of advice would be to get a good overview of
earlier empirical work in order to understand just how much
societies, economies and polities have changed over the last 40-50
years. There are still too many studies that assume rural societies
are relatively unchanged or unchanging - what Ogan called the 'cult
of virginity!' Too much of the earlier data remain unused when its
great value could lie in its use for comparisons with the present.
I suspect archaeologists are better at looking at the earlier
research records than those of some other disciplines.
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Annual ANU-DFAT
Consultation
Over the past several years, ANU's Pacific academics have held
annual consultations with senior Pacific officers of the Australian
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Informal in nature - there
are no set agendas or briefing papers - these meetings provide an
opportunity for an open and valuable exchange of opinions and views
about contemporary Pacific issues, to the mutual benefit of both
sides. This year's consultation took place on Monday 26 October at
the ANU. DFAT delegation was led by Joe Thwaites, accompanied by
Colin Hill and Greg Moriarty. The ANU delegation comprised of Greg
Fry, Brij V Lal, Peter Larmour, Ron May, Scott MacWilliam, Hank
Nelson, William Sutherland, and RG Ward. The midday meeting was
followed by an informal lunch in the garden of the University
House. The ANU academics outlined their research interests and
concerns while the DFAT group informed the meeting of forthcoming
developments on several key Pacific issues.
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Some Key Pacific
Projects At ANU
In our future issues, we will carry more detailed profiles of some
of the important collaborative research projects and their leaders
at the ANU and elsewhere. Here briefly are some examples.
Resource
Management in Asia-Pacific
This project focuses on environmental change and social and
economic transformation and its consequences for the Asia-Pacific
region. The project engages in a cross-disciplinary dialogue within
and beyond the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the
ANU about such resource sectors as forestry, water and energy,
mining, agriculture, and marine resource. Indonesia and Papua New
Guinea understandably receive particular emphasis. The Project's
current Pacific research activities include Mineral resources
(Papua New Guinea, Irian Jaya and New Caledonia).
The Project's Steering Committee includes Bryant Allen (Human
Geography), Chris Ballard (Pacific and Asian History), Harold
Brookfield (Anthropology), Ron Duncan (National Centre for
Development Studies), James Fox (Anthropology), Geoff Hope
(Archaeology and Natural History), and Ron May (Political and
Social Change).
The Project has run a fortnightly seminar series on resource
management issues in the Asia-Pacific. Working Papers drawn from
these seminars are available to the general public, policy makers
and other interested organisations in the region. The Papers are
available in hard copy as well as on the Internet address: http://rspas.anu.edu.au/rmap
State, Society
and Governance in Melanesia Project
SSGM examines the various ways in which island nations of Melanesia
have responded to the unprecedented challenges of social, economic
and political change brought about by internal pressures, which
include increasing populations with rising expectations, declining
administrative and service delivery capacities, and limited
physical endowments, as well as pressures from donor countries and
international financial institutions to confront critical long and
short term development issues.
In particular, the project examines the emergence of new
political structures in many Melanesian societies with no tradition
of centralised power. The core concerns involve relations between
states and societies and challenges to sovereignty in the creation
of new national entities. Research activity centres around issues
of political representation, public order, violence and legitimacy,
ethnicity, nationalism and gender.
The Project, which is partly funded by the Australian Department
of Foreign Affairs and Trade and AusAID, has three Fellows:
Sinclair Dinnen, Bronwen Douglas and Anthony Regan. An active and
flourishing publishing program through monographs and working
papers disseminates the Project's research to scholars and the
general public. Several prominent Pacific island leaders have been
involved in the Project's activities.
The Steering Committee of the SSGM consists of Ron Duncan
(National Centre for Development Studies), Donald Denoon (Pacific
and Asian History), Ross Garnaut (Economics), Margaret Jolly
(Anthropology), Brij V Lal (Pacific and Asian History), Peter
Larmour (NCDS), Ron May and Bill Standish (Political and Social
Change), Darrell Tryon (Linguistics), and RG Ward (Human
Geography). Monica Wehner is the project's busy executive
assistant.
Encyclopaedia
of the Pacific Islands
This project is based in the Division of Pacific and Asian History
of RSPAS and nearing completion. More than 300 scholars from around
the world have contributed entries, ranging from 100 words to
substantial surveys of several thousand words. These are arranged
under broad headings (physical environment, peoples, history,
politics, economics, society and culture). The information is
clearly written and attractively presented. The text, amounting to
about 1000 entries, is in the final stages of editing and
cross-checking. It is accompanied by more than 250 photographs,
maps, tables, graphs and country flags, and will go to design at
the end of November 1998. The
Encyclopaedia, which has been generously
funded by AusAID, will be published jointly by the Asia-Pacific
Press at the ANU and the University of Hawai'i Press, both as a
single-volume printed work and as a separately produced CD-ROM
version.
The editorial advisory board, chaired by Donald Denoon,
comprises distinguished Pacific scholars in several disciplines in
Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific Islands, the United States and
Europe. Brij V. Lal and Kate Fortune are the Encyclopaedia's
editors. Kate, a New Zealander, will return home early next year,
having seen to completion a project that might have had a different
(not to say indifferent) fate without her energy and dedication.
Her book, Malguna Road: the Papua and New Guinea Diaries of
Sarah Chinnery was launched recently at the National
Library.
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The Land Management Project
The Land Management Project was established within the Department
of Human Geography in RSPAS in 1988, and led by Bryant Allen and
Mike Bourke. Its objectives are to assess the long-term
sustainability of indigenous agriculture systems under conditions
of rapid population growth, the stresses generated by increasing
social and economic demands, and of extreme climatic events and
global climatic change. Work is presently concentrated in Papua New
Guinea, but students have worked in Sabah and the Philippines. In
1991, LMP obtained substantial outside funding to investigate the
intensification of agriculture in PNG at a national scale. This
work, which has involved extensive fieldwork, has generated an
enormous amount of data as well as ethnographic material, and
published in some 22 Working Papers.
The importance of this information was emphasised in September
and November 1997, when members of the project were able to carry
out, together with PNG collaborators, two national assessments of
food and water supply in PNG during the very severe 1997-1998
drought.
The LMP is also a part of the PNG cluster in the UN University's
Population, Land Management and Environmental Change (PLEC), funded
by a grant to the UNU from the UN's Global Environmental Facility.
Other cluster members are the Department of Human Ecology, the
University of Tokyo, and the PNG National Research Institute, which
are coordinating with the PNG Cluster.
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Gender
Relations Project
This Project was established in 1992, initially as a School project
which was subsequently made a part of the Division of Society and
Environment. It undertakes original research and publication, and
facilitates national and international collaboration on several
aspects of gender relations, combining the insights of several
disciplines - most notably anthropology, history, geography and
politics. Its primary focus is to connect colonial history and
postcolonial developments in the study of women and their relation
to men in Asian and Pacific regions. It also strives to facilitate
collaboration with academics, government and non-government
organisations in the region. Much of the Project's work has focused
on two major themes: sexuality, fertility and reproductive health,
and the gendering of national and migrant identities in Asia and
the Pacific. The Project's leader is Margaret Jolly.
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Recent
Pacific Seminars At The ANU
Every week, and often more than once a week, there is a seminar or
a workshop or a colloquium on some aspect or the other of Pacific
society, history, economy or politics around the campus. Here are
just some samples from the second half of this year:
SSGM Seminars
John Burton, ANU, 'Walking the Three-legged Dog: Negotiating
Corporate Behaviour at Wau, Papua New Guinea,' 18 August.
Sandra Tarte, USP, 'Negotiating a Tuna Management Regime for the
Central and Western Pacific: Policy Options and Strategies for
Pacific Island States,' 24 August.
Mark Turner, University of Canberra, 'Building Institutions for
a Capable Public Sector in Papua New Guinea,' 4 September.
Rod Lacey, Australian Catholic University, 'Helping People
Repair Houses: Reflecting on Processes in the 'Partnerships for
Peacemaking' Project among the Enga of PNG,' 6 October.
Jolene Stritecky, University of Iowa (joint seminar with
Anthropology): 'Israel, America and the Ancestors: Spritual Warfare
in a Pentecostal Denomination in Solomon Islands', 18 November.
Peter Brown, ANU: 'New Caledonia: Strangers in Paradise,
Stranger than Paradise', 8 December.
Division of Pacific and Asian History
Junko Edo, 'Notions of Indigenous Identity in New Caledonia,' 11
August.
Hank Nelson, 'Rabaul: What happened during World War II,' 18
August
Bronwen Douglas, 'Christianity in Melanesian identities and
politics,' 18 August.
Michael Morgan, PhD candidate, 'Governance and the history of
state-society relations in Vanuatu,' 13 October.
Resource Management Seminar
Mal Allen, 'Agricultural intensification in Vanuatu,' 6 August.
Tarcisius Kabutaulaka, 'Paths in the Jungle: Landowners and
logging in the Solomon Islands,' 15 October.
Stephanie Guy McCoy, 'Environmental Aspects of Regenerative
Toxic Nickel Mine Waste in New Caledonia,' 29 October.
Department of Anthropology
James Weiner, 'Hand, Voice and Gender in Papua New Guinea Myth,' 29
July.
Alan Rumsey, 'Agency, Personhood and the 'I' of Discourse in the
Pacific and Beyond,' 12 August.
Lissant Bolton, 'Women Have Kastom Too: Changing the Definition
of Kastom in Vanuatu,' 2 September.
Department of Political and Social Change
Scott MacWilliam, 'Weak State, Strong State, Which State - Papua
New Guinea, 1958-1978,' 22 June
Maev O' Collins, 'Poverty and Inequality in the Pacific:
Reflections on the Fiji and PNG Poverty Reports of 1997,' 13
July
Scott MacWilliam, 'The History of Development in Papua New
Guinea During the 1940s and early 1950s,' 14 July.
Tarcisius Kabutaulaka and Joseph Tuhanuku, 'Public Sector Reform
and Political Instability Under the Ulufa'alu Government in Solomon
Islands,' 12 October.
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Acknowledgement
Thanks to many colleagues for their generous support of the Centre.
Most of all, grateful thanks to Jude Shanahan of the Division of
Pacific and Asian History, for the design and preparation of this
issue. Dorothy McIntosh was characteristically generous with
administrative support. Robert Langdon gave valuable editorial
advice.
In
Future Issues
Research profiles of Pacific scholars at ANU, and a list of their
latest publications, reports on conferences, seminars and
workshops.
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Please write to us at:
Centre for the Contemporary Pacific
Research School of Pacific & Asian Studies
Coombs Bldg No. 9
The Australian National University
Canberra ACT 0200 AUSTRALIA
Fax: 61 2 6125 5525/Email: ccp@coombs.anu.edu.au
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