The Changing South Pacific: Identities and Transformations

349 Pages·2008·1.2 MB·english

by  Serge Tcherkézoff

THE CHANGING
SOUTH PACIFIC

THE CHANGING
SOUTH PACIFIC
Identities and Transformations
Edited by
Serge Tcherkézoff and
Françoise Douaire-Marsaudon
Translated by Nora Scott
Published by ANU E Press
The Australian National University
Canberra ACT 0200, Australia
Email: [email protected]
Cover: Photography by Bob Cooper
Previously published by Pandanus Books
National Library in Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Title: The changing South Pacific : identities and transformations / edited by Serge Tcherkézoff.
ISBN: 9781921536144 (pbk.)
9781921536151 (pdf)
Notes: Bibliography.
Subjects: Ethnology--Oceania.
Oceania--Politics and government.
Other Authors/Contributors:
Tcherkézoff, Serge.
Dewey Number: 305.800995
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
First edition © 2005 Pandanus Books
This edition © 2008 ANU E Press
5
Acknowledgments
In 1990, a member of our temporary research group — Identités et transformations des
sociétés océaniennes — in the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique suggested that
each member of the group contribute an article on the theme of identity and transformation.
We were all researchers from various cross-cultural ‘laboratories’, that is, more permanent
centres of research jointly organised by the CNRS and universities (Laboratoire
d’anthropologie sociale, Laboratoire de langues et civilisations orientales, Techniques et Cultures,
and so on), who had met through seminars and common research programs. At that time, a
permanent multidisciplinary research centre focused on Pacific Studies did not exist
(CREDO was not established until 1995). Everyone agreed on the idea, even if some added
that they were unlikely to have the time to write an article, while others who had originally
committed were later obliged to respond to other priorities. Their contributions were written
from 1990 to 1995 and the resulting book was published in French in 1997 as Le Pacifique-
sud aujourd’hui: Identités et transformations culturelles, by CNRS Press. No significant
changes have been introduced in the current translation, although some additional
bibliographical references have been given.
Our thanks go to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Comité du Fonds Pacifique),
who agreed to fund the translation, to Nora Scott who undertook this immense task, and to
our friends and colleagues at the Research School of Asian and Pacific Studies, The Australian
National University, who accepted to publish it: David Hegarty, Director of the Centre for
Contemporary Pacific and the State, Society and Governance in Melanesia Project, and Darrell
Tryon, Deputy Director of the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies.
S. Tcherkézoff,
Canberra, October 2004
6
Preface
Scientific collaboration between France and Australia in the social sciences and humanities
has come a long way since the joint signing of the Cultural, Scientific and Technical
Agreement in 1977. Today there exist collaborative agreements between French and
Australian higher education and research institutions that cover a wide variety of disciplines.
Not the least of these was the International Program of Scientific Collaboration (PICS)
2001–2004, between the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), France’s
national scientific research body, and The Australian National University (ANU). This
program, entitled ‘Early Encounters in the Pacific’, was conducted by the Centre de
Recherche et de Documentation sur l’Océanie (CREDO), a research centre of the Maison de
l’Asie-Pacifique, housed at the University of Provence, Marseilles and the Research School of
Pacific and Asian Studies (RSPAS), at The Australian National University. This multi-
disciplinary research program has now entered a second phase, looking at modern political,
economic and cultural encounters in Pacific societies, as seen through the prism of earlier
traditional Oceanic values and social institutions. The results of the first phase of the CNRS-
ANU collaboration are currently in press.
The publication of The Changing South Pacific: Identities and Transformations by
Pandanus Books and the Centre for the Contemporary Pacific at the Research School of Pacific
and Asian Studies is a further step in the collaboration between our sister institutions. First
published under the leadership of Serge Tcherkézoff and Françoise Douaire-Marsaudon, this
translation of Le Pacifique-Sud aujourd’hui makes accessible to an English-speaking
readership the fruits of the research of a leading group of French social scientists on a subject
which has been at the heart of much of the social science research carried out in the Pacific
region over the past decade, namely the cultural and political transformations taking place in
Oceanic societies and the concomitant emergence of new regional and national identities.
Collaboration between the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and
the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at The Australian National University is
now well established in a number of disciplines. However, in many areas, this collaboration
and sharing of research results is in need of further enhancement. Indeed, one of the
principal findings from the French Assises de la Recherche Française dans le Pacifique — a
French government review of French research in the Pacific over the last twenty years, held in
Noumea in August 2004 — was that a major effort should be mounted to make
francophone research more accessible to the English-speaking world. The publication of The
Changing South Pacific: Identities and Transformationsis an important step in this direction.
Darrell Tryon
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies
The Australian National University
August 2005
7
Foreword to the original edition
Bernard Juillerat
Mention Oceania, and what springs to mind is hardly a ‘continent’ on the lines of Africa
or America, but rather an ocean — more nearly a void — surrounded by continents,
among which the subcontinent of Australia. And yet the unity of this space that is home to
so many island peoples and cultures no longer needs proving: it is based on a common origin
in Asia, and on the large linguistic groups that grew from this single root, of which the
Austronesian group populates nearly the whole of the Pacific.
Today, however, the peoples of the Pacific are in search of a unified identity built on
cultural and political foundations that reach beyond the borders of the independent nations,
of the protectorates or of the French overseas territories. The many aboriginal groups of
Australia described by classical Anthropology increasingly recognise themselves in a ‘pan-
aboriginal identity’ opposed to white power; likewise, Melanesians are seeking stronger ties
among themselves, independently of their cultural diversity and the borders left them by the
colonial powers, but they would also like to join the people of Oceania as a whole, whether
by the intermediary of pluri-governmental institutions or a common identity — the Pacific
Way — which has room for all particularisms.
On the large islands — in particular New Guinea, the Solomon and Vanuatu — a
number of human groups are still feeling the aftershocks of their first contact with the
colonisers and missionaries: they remain deeply rooted in the old culture, although these roots
are already growing weaker, but the members of these groups are also attempting to interpret
what history is in the process of offering them or imposing on them; it is a time of doubt, of
rejection, of enthusiasms and sometimes of millenarian illusions. A second stage in the
transition towards Westernization can be seen in a form of biculturalism: the societies in this
situation have assimilated Christianity and Western education, have invested in political life
and local development programs and thus feel endowed with a new identity, although they
remain relatively isolated. Lastly, in the archipelagos that have been administered and
Christianised since the nineteenth century, like Polynesia or New Caledonia, today’s
populations are experiencing what could be called a third phase of transition: Christianity has
been assimilated and the ancestral culture partially forgotten; the inhabitants have understood
the issues of political life and are part of the market economy. If they are an independent
State, they have assumed responsibility for their own destiny and are debating the changes to
be made in their constitutional system, their relations with the other countries in the South
Pacific as well as national development and their membership in the world community. At the
same time, however, they are anxious to continue the traditions that make their cultural
difference, in the growing globalization, to preserve something of their past.
8
The present work is divided into three parts corresponding roughly to these three
‘phases’ of transformation. Needless to say, these stages are connected by a historical
continuum and should be seen as merely a reading aid, to help follow this book, but also the
never-ending story of change in the cultures of the South Pacific.
This book is the outcome of a collective effort. Since the 1960s a group of French
anthropologists has been studying some societies in Oceania. Over the years, the group has
changed names, lost members and gained new ones, grown younger and contained in the
1990s some twenty researchers, belonging to diverse laboratories and research groups. A
dozen texts are gathered in this volume, each presenting a society, captured in its generality
or seen from a specific point of view, but always with reference to the issue of collective
identity and its confrontation with history and change. All of the present studies stem from
work conducted ‘in the field’ over many long months and many trips, sometimes extending
over a period of twenty years or more. For history happens in the field, and that is where the
anthropologist must tirelessly follow these societies into their future.
9
CONTENTS
Preface viii
Foreward ix
Introduction: The cargo will not come… 1
PART ONE
Chapter 1: Aspects and Stages ofthe Westernisation of aTribal Society 27
Maurice Godelier
Chapter 2: ‘My poor border dwellers’ (Yafar 1970–1995) 43
Bernard Juillerat
Chapter 3: Men’s Houses, Other People’s Houses 63
Philippe Peltier
Chapter 4: Cargo cult or sin cult? A Melanesian rite to better God 85
Monique Jeudy-Ballini
Chapter 5: Human Sacrifice and Cargo Cult in New Ireland 106
Brigitte Derlon
PARTTWO
Chapter 6: In Australia, it’s ‘Aboriginal’ with a capital ‘A’ 135
Barbara Glowczewski
Chapter 7: ‘Mipela wan bilas’ 158
Pierre Lemonnier
Chapter 8: Why should everyone have a different name? 182
Pascale Bonnemère
Chapter 9: Of atolls and gardens 194
Jean-Michel Chazine
PART THREE
Chapter 10: Food and Wealth 207
Françoise Douaire-Marsaudon
Chapter 11: Identity at stake in the present-day Kingdom of Tonga 230
Marie-Claire Bataille and Georges Benguigui
Chapter 12: Culture, nation, society 245
Serge Tcherkézoff
Bibliography 303
Biographies 333