The Changing South Pacific: Identities and Transformations

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 n 1990, a member of our temporary research group — Identités et transformations des Isociétés 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, Labor atoire 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 cientific collaboration between France and Australia in the social sciences and humanities Shas 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 multidisciplinary 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 Transformations is 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 ention Oceania, and what springs to mind is hardly a ‘continent’ on the lines of Africa Mor 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,

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