Joël Bonnemaison Profession : Ethnographe JEAN-MARC PHILIBERT and MARGARET RODMAN
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Joël Bonnemaison Profession : ethnographe JEAN-MARC PHILIBERT AND MARGARET RODMAN URING ALL HIS CAREER,but perhaps even Joël Bonnemaison on Tanna D more so in his most recent research project, Joël Bonnemaison particularly wanted Although North American socio-cultural to strengthen linkages with anthropology. No anthropology and French cultural geography doubt there is much more that he would have belong to different social science disciplines, done in this regard had his life not been so they nonetheless take culture as the central dimension of their study and this results, as it tragically cut short. However, we wish to point did in the case of Joël Bonnemaison, in some out that he was well on his way to achieving a overlap. More than once, a laughing Joël said remarkable synthesis of geography and anthro- that he considered himself more of an anthro- pology. For him, each discipline enriched the pologist than a geographer, though in latter other ; this was evident in his research, his years he came to believe, wrongly in Our view, writing, and in informa1 scientific exchanges that anthropologists did not Iike his ethno- with other scholars. Joël Bonnemaison's input graphy of Vanuatu. To anthropologists, his benefited each of our anthropological research work is at once familiar, almost second nature projects in Vanuatu, as he enriched so many one might say, yet also strangely offbeat: his scholars' projects. We believe that the linkages descriptions of Vanuatu society and culture he nurtured between anthropology and geo- belong to earlier, more innocent times in the graphy will grow stronger as his work and social sciences. However, to those of us working influence live on over the years to come. We in Vanuatu, he was a consummate ethno- begin with an overview of his approach to grapher writing what many of us would have Tannese culture and how it allowed him to liked to write, if it had not been for the resolve problems of social organization on restrictions imposed by recent canons in our Tanna that had caused anthropologists to discipline. gnash their teeth. We then move on to show In studying a foreign society and its how Joël Bonnemaison's work contributes, at associated culture, a bridge is needed to cover a theoretical level, to anthropologists' under- the gap between the understanding, world view, standing of culture and space and, in practical values, and perceptions of the observer and terms, to improved ethnographic descriptions. those of members of the host community. À Joël Bonnemaison, le Voyage inachevé.. Furthermore, ethnographers are forced to rely seen in the work of R. Rubinstein (1378) on on their observations and the information they Malo, L. Lindstrom (1930) on Tanna and obtain from a limited number of valued infor- M. Rodman (1386,1387) on Ambae. Howwer, mants. A way must thus be found to move from what separates Joël Bonnemaison from these this limited data to the shared knowledge that anthropologists is that he did not consider the alone explains the regulated behaviour of local idea of culture-as-mental-map to be simply a people in their daily life. This is accomplished metaphor; indeed, he took the expression by positing the idea of culture, a shared literally. He was convinced that Vanuatu collective reality in the shape of an intellectual societies are in essence "geographic societies" map acquired during socialization that subse- based on an organic unity of culture and place quently guides the action of people. The attri- (earth, land, safe territory, and religious land- butes the observer gives to this concept, the scape) and that ni-Vanuatu believe that humans template used to model the various cognitive, grow from the soi1 like plants. Secondly, a behavioural, and structural processes at work serendipitous meeting of minds took place in social life, in other words the way culture is between a geographer fascinated by island operationalized, al1 this will markedly landscapes, for which he later invented the influence the shape and content of ethno- word îléité, and the intellectual landscape of graphie descriptions. Needless to say there is the Tannese. This is how he saw Tannese no one nght way to conceptualize culture, only culture : different ways as show; in the numerous (( Culture is in a way an extension of the earth, a "law variants of the notion of culture in use; the of the earth" inscribed on the tem'toly and bound up validity of the notion can only be measured with magical powers sprung froni the sacred ground; against the ethnographer's objective, in other it can only be practised by men whose forefathers were words, whether or not it is the clearest way to bred out of that territoly. There is thus a profound understanding the social phenomena under identification between blood (kinship) and earth study. When it comes to culture, pragmatics (tm'toly], hence the foundation of a very strong th- matter more than principles. torial ideology.. What is called kastom (traditional We would like to explain how Bonne- culture) in the New Hebrides [Vanuatu] hinges on maison's notion of traditional culture, kastom, this law of the earth )) la coutume, differs from what is used in anthro- (Bonnemaison 1380 : 183, our translation), pology today (Philibert 1932). Since we beliwe we figure among the anthropologist friends Anthropologists now use models of culture whom he considered critical of his work, we that are partly or wholly confrontational. They thought we should explain the anthropologi- take note in any social group of varying unders- cal reaction to Joël's work in Vanuatu, while tandings of a given culture; they witness the also pointing out his significant contribution introduction of new meanings that displace to Our knowledge of Vanuatu societies and old ones ; they observe people competing with cultures. others to ensure that their own perspective He considered the notion of place or becomes the established communal view. A territory central for the understanding of heightened sense of histoncal contingency and Vanuatu traditional cultures. He was not the a greater attention to the politics of culture only one to have seen that : indeed, many characterize recent anthropological descrip- anthropologists recognized the sociological tions. Such a dynamic model of culture is a and cultural role played by a sense of place as long way from the cultural longue durée that À la rencontre de Joël Bonnemaison Joël Bonnemaison used when he looked upon stones) until they came to a stop ; he tied this unchanging Tannese landscapes as the guaran- to the myth documenting the killing of a sea tee of an undying traditional culture. monster semo-semo and the dispersa1 of the L. Lindstrom (1990) offers a very different view pieces of his body over the island that accoun- ofTannese society in which geographical and ted for the name and territory ofTannese poli- cultural knowledges are a political tool for tical groups ; finally, he linked the above to the maintaining social disparity among Tannese, idea of first appearance whereby each group is rather than being a collective production attached to a root-place where founding ances- devoid of seaional interests. It may seem ironic tors are said to have emerged. He made solving that the island of Tanna should be the locale the problem of Tannese social organization in which such opposite views of culture are look so simple that Our admiration for his work argued, but we are fortunate that it is so. While was coloured by the tiniest bit of irritation that Bonnemaison's ethnography may seem a little it should be a geographer who managed that. old fashioned to some, it nonetheless offers a totalizing view of Tannese culture at a time Joël Bonnemaison's contribution when anthropologists seem to have lost the to the anthropology of space secret of such descriptions. Bonnemaison's work goes beyond the simple Bonnemaison's work had a direct bearing ethnography ofVanuatu to complement recent on the ethnography of Vanuatu as he helped trends in anthropology. Of these, we single out solve riddles that had eluded anthropologists. two here : his emphasis on the power of Until the publication of his Les fondements d'une people's attachment to place, and the combi- identité, vol. 2 : Tanna :Les hommes-lieux (1987), nation of precision and poetry in his approach the only monograph on Tanna was Jean to understanding the meaning of territory. Guiart's Un siècle et demi de contacts culturels à Tanna (1956) which described a complex social organization in which kinship, economic, poli- Power of place tical, and religious institutions combined in (( Place attachment » is an interdisciplinary mysterious ways. Tannese society was organi- concem of environment and behaviour studies zed around a very tight spatial/social grid that crosses into anthropology and geography. controlling the movement of people and goods To the best of Our knowledge, Joël never used and a hierarchical system of titles devoid of the phrase, but his work directly addressed the real social authority. Jean Guiart had counted issue in a particularly productive way. The 1,100 titles on Tanna in 1953 when the esti- power of place on Tanna, as he described it, mated adult male population was 1,790 (as resides in rootedness, boundaries, and bridges. reported in Brunton 1979 : 103). The paradox He understood attachment to a place at a about Tannese social organization was that of deeply persona1 level. Any of us who saw him "an atomistic society with a lot of structure" at his home in Gascony could appreciate at (Brunton 1979 : 102), far too much institu- first hand the bond that conneaed him, despite tional structure for the little it did. Bonne- al1 his travels, to those sun-drenched hills.