11th Conference of the European Society for Oceanists LMU Munich ESfO Conference Programme ESfO Conference Programme 2017 Programme ESfO Conference Experiencing Pacific Environments Experiencing Pacific Environments Experiencing Pacific 29 June 2017 - 02 July 2017 Hofbräuhaus Museum Fünf Kontinente Organised by the Department for Social and Cultural Anthropology LMU Munich, Germany y t C h n o l i e n i g g o u l i s o t n i k h t e s e i m g u M e o e d e i i z l g i s n o l o u u o n n n d h M h K t n h t e t o ö l e l e r k o i t e a h p i t g s n d e t z E i a r f e t R o d a S S n e h u E l t k hi n c i g e s t i n g o r M o n i i n t i g a u r s h W e e t i h z e n e b i o t l l o g e g w o i e m l i - U f M e n s c h o n h t e V k is ti u li e o lle P A n en t di hr tu op r-S olo de gie Gen Ritualtheorien e Front painting: Huhana Smith Te Rae #2 Rae ki te Rae/Face to Face 2013 Cover design and programme layout: Martin Krauth [email protected] 11th Conference of the European Society for Oceanists ESfO Conference Programme Experiencing Pacific Environments 29 June 2017 - 02 July 2017 Organised by the Department for Social and Cultural Anthropology LMU Munich, Germany Acknowledgements Welcome to the 11th ESfO Conference: As organisers of the 11th ESfO conference, we wish to thank everyone who is “Experiencing Pacific Environments” committed to the continuous operation of ESfO as an international scholarly organisation. Organising this conference has been an exhilarating experience On behalf of the ESfO Board and the local organising team, we offer a warm and we would like to thank you for participating. Our special thanks go to Toon welcome to all ESfO 2017 participants to Munich, Germany. We are delighted to van Meijl, the former chair of ESfO, for sharing his experiences with organis- be able to host you here. The conference is a wonderful opportunity to recon- ing ESfO conferences with us, Laurent Dousset for his support for building the nect and re-invigorate German-Pacific relations with an eye to the future. conference website, Cornelia Schröttenhammer from CSM, Congress & Seminar Landlocked Munich is a long way away from Pacific shores, but our city boasts Management for her professional handling of the conference registration, and institutions and collections with Pacific connections. The university’s depart- Nadine Böhmer from the LMU staff for her patience with us on matters of room ment of Social and Cultural Anthropology is increasingly engaged in research allocation and logistics. In addition, our thanks go to the conference consul- activity across the Pacific and the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München tancy of LMU and to the many student volunteers who have worked tirelessly to has a special research focus on environmental issues. We hope you will have a make this conference happen. chance to visit the Museum Five Continents here in Munich. We are especially We acknowledge the generous funding from a number of sources without grateful that the museum agreed so generously to host some of the confer- which this conference could not have taken place: Deutsche Forschungsgemein- ence’s panels, and to welcome you for an evening reception. schaft (DFG) and the LMU Munich, including the Institute of Social and Cultural The theme ‘Experiencing Pacific Environments’ has attracted interest from Anthropology, and the Department for the Study of Culture. across the globe so that we can offer you almost thirty panels and two hundred and fifty papers. Through these, we hope to shape interdisciplinary conversa- From the organising team: Eveline Dürr | Chair, Philipp Schorch | Deputy Chair, tions between anthropology and other disciplines and fields. With our main con- Vivien Ahrens, Sina Emde, Marie Eser, Jeannine-Madeleine Fischer, Desirée ference theme, which attempts to tackle urgent and difficult issues, we have Hetzel, Patric Hippmann, Rebecca Hofmann, Oliver Liebig, Arno Pascht. set ourselves a worthy challenge. We hope to provide the friendly environment, well known from other ESfO conferences, that will facilitate discussion and Members of ESfO Board for the period 2015-2017 debate, and allow you to meet with friends old and new. Our format, which encourages artistic contributions, and dialogues between Austria and Eastern Europe: Southern Europe: artists and academics, responds, in a sense, to early German research traditions Borut Telban | Ljubljana Anna Paini | Verona as well as expressionism’s artistic interventions in the early 1900s, both in the Hermann Mückler | Vienna Elisabetta Gnecchi Ruscone larger and still problematic context of German colonialism in the Pacific. While Milano.Bicocca academic-cum-artistic interest in the Pacific never regained the same promi- France: nence in Germany after WWII, there is a small but lively research community, Laurent Dousset | Marseille Switzerland: as you will know from our engagements with the ESfO conferences since their Simonne Pauwels | Marseille Katharina Wilhelmina Haslwanter very beginnings. Zurich There are strong, and long-lasting connections with Oceania through the Pacific Germany: Beatrice Voirol | Basel collections in Germany’s anthropological museums. While Pacific scholarship Eveline Dürr | Munich and collections in Germany are closely entangled with the country’s colonial Sina Emde | Heidelberg United Kingdom: history, both the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology and the Philipp Schorch | Munich Craig Lind | St Andrews Museum Five Continents address such pressing themes as indigenous curator- Anthony Pickles | Cambridge ship, the decolonization of knowledge, and the ethical implications of collection Netherlands: provenance and their future potentialities in Europe and the Pacific. Toon Van Meijl | Nijmegen Pacific Island Nations: We are truly delighted to say that six of our nine keynote speakers and many Anke Tonnaer | Nijmegen Philip Cass | Auckland delegates of this year’s conference are indigenous scholars from Oceania. The number of indigenous Pacific delegates has constantly grown from only a Scandinavia: handful in the 1990s to a much larger number today. The width and depth of Annelin Eriksen | Bergen scholarship presented in Munich will, we hope, provide many opportunities for Thorgeir Storesund Kolshus | Oslo dialogue, connections and future collaborations. 2 | Acknowledgements Welcome to the 11th ESfO Conference | 3 Enjoy the conference - and make sure you find some time to enjoy Munich’s wonderful cultural, culinary and environmental offerings. Table of Contents Eveline Dürr Chair, European Society for Oceanists p 7 Conference Theme Philipp Schorch Deputy Chair, European Society for Oceanists p 8 Conference Programme p 12 Plenary Events p 25 Panels Overview p 28 Panels and Paper Abstracts p 28 Panel 1: Pacific histories in and out of Oceania p 36 Panel 2: Transformative appropriations and iconic power in the Pacific p 44 Panel 3: Challenges to sustainable land and marine-based livelihood systems p 53 Panel 4: Adapting Oceania? Scrutinizing the concepts, culture and politics of climate change adaption in Oceania p 62 Panel 5: Natural disasters in Oceania p 74 Panel 6: Collecting human-environment relations in the Pacific p 82 Panel 7: Bridewealth and the productive and reproductive autonomy of women in the Pacific p 89 Panel 8: Quantitative data or analysis to answer anthropological questions: advantages and disadvantages p 95 Panel 9: Place(s) for innovation? Enduring and changing materials in the Pacific p 104 Panel 10: The Pacific Ocean as a new frontier? 4 | Welcome to the 11th ESfO Conference Table of Contents | 5 p 110 Panel 11: Giving up naturalism or towards a social complexity shared with animals Experiencing Pacific Environments p 117 Panel 12: Haunted Pacific The theme of the 11th conference of the European Society for Oceanists ‘Expe- p 124 Panel 13: Genealogical methods: Kinship as practical ontology riencing Pacific Environments’ is inspired by profound transformations and asso- ciated discussions in Oceania, and sets out to ask questions and find possible p 132 Panel 15: New challenges, new boundaries: The adaption of answers that adequately reflect the diversity of people’s changing life-worlds. anthropology Migration, urbanisation, religious movements, resource extraction and climate change, as well as new technologies like the internet and mobile phones, are p 137 Panel 16: Alternative socialities in and beyond Oceania just some of the recent key topics across the Pacific. While Pacific lives have always featured mobilities, networks and relatedness, the contemporary era of p 144 Panel 17: Barkcloth in Pacific environments spatial and temporal reconfigurations accelerates these experiences and cre- ates new qualities and meanings. p 149 Panel 18: Pacific worlding and the ‘ephemerally concrete’ This focus on experiencing environments allows, in our view, to illuminate concrete empirical realities, and to highlight the agency and perspectives of p 155 Panel 19: Māori landscapes and culturescapes people and their creative capacities to retain, transform, and (re)create ways of life in their interactions with human and other-than-human entities. During the p 160 Panel 20: Political landscapes in Melanesia today conference, we hope to encourage discussions about the various possibilities and limitations people face and deploy while experiences and environments p 167 Panel 21: Responses to environment in distress: become re-constituted. To achieve this, we suggest viewing human and other- Community-based social protection and climate change than-human ‘experiences’ as lived in relation to, and embedded in, specific in the Pacific ‘environments’.