"Urban(e) Tannese: Local Perspectives on Settlement life in Port Vila, Vanuatu"

The below is quoted directly from an email circulated by the Center for Pacific Islands. For more on the exhibit, click on the image at right:

East-West Center Seminar in connection with the exhibit 'Port Vila: Mi Lavam Yu'
Cosponsored with the Department of Anthropology, UHM

"Urban(e) Tannese: Local Perspectives on Settlement life in Port Vila, Vanuatu"

by Lamont Lindstrom
Department of Anthropology, University of Tulsa

12 noon Friday September 2, 2011
East-West Center Art Gallery

Significant rural-urban migration has characterized the postcolonial Melanesian states including Vanuatu. Over the past 30 years, most people who once lived in Samaria village (Tanna Island) have moved to squatter settlements that ring Port Vila, Vanuatu's capital town. Life history interviewing of migrants now living in Port Vila's Blacksands and Ohlen neighborhoods document peoples' participation in urban life and how this participation is shaping a new urbanity in Vanuatu.

Lamont Lindstrom is Kendall Professor of Anthropology at the University of Tulsa.  He is the author of Cargo Cult: Strange Stories of Desire from Melanesia and Beyond, Knowledge and Power in a South Pacific and has also published on the work of Martin and Osa Johnson, kava, chiefs and governance, Pacific War ethnohistory, and written a dictionary and grammar of Kwamera language (Tanna, Vanuatu). Several of his photographs are featured in EWC's current exhibition, 'Port Vila: Mi Lavam Yu'

****************************
For further information, please contact Bill Feltz, EWC <feltzb@eastwestcenter.org>

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Jack Tobin Papers

Image
--> Pacific Collection librarian Eleanor Kleiber recently finished processing the Jack Tobin Papers , and they are now available for public use. Jack Adair Tobin, Ph.D. (June 15, 1920-June 18, 2010) was an anthropologist who worked in the Marshall Islands, beginning in 1950. This manuscript collection, which comprises roughly six linear feet of material and covers the bulk of Dr. Tobin's professional life, is extremely important in that it contains primary source documentation of numerous aspects of Marshallese life during a period of intense change. In addition to the physical materials in the collection, nearly 2,000 photographs have also been digitized and are available online . A finding aid for the collection is also available online . The Jack Tobin Collection is one of more than 60 Pacific manuscript collections -- because these collections are comprised primarily of unpublished material, they are an important tool when searching for primary source docume...
Read more

Bidding a fond Aloha to Joan Hori

Hawaiian Collection curator Joan Hori retired on December 28, after 44 years of service at the University of Hawai'i. In addition to her position as curator, at the time of her retirement Joan also served as department head of the Hawaiian and Pacific Collections.  Joan began working at UHM's Sinclair Library in 1968, eventually taking on responsibility as head of Sinclair. In 1993 she transferred to Hamilton Library, and in 1995 she joined the Hawaiian Collection. She became curator of the collection after Chieko Tachihata's retirement in 1999.  Joan's better known projects include Hawai'i's first Hawaiian language digitization project in the late 1990s, and the English language digitization project which has brought us free online access to pre-1923 issues of the  Hawaiian Gazette ,  Garden Island ,  Maui News , parts of  Hilo Tribune , the  Honolulu Star-Bulletin  and its predecessors, and a number of other titles. The project is ongo...
Read more

On Display: Snitch

Image
The Hawaiian & Pacific Collections are currently exhibiting a sculpture titled "snitch," by Aotearoa-based artist Brett Graham. The sculpture is on loan from the UH Art Gallery, which provided the below description: Brett   Graham   (Aotearoa/New Zealand)  snitch, 2014 foam, tar, feathers Different manifestations of binding can involve alienation, appropriation and misappropriation that may result in an integration of sorts. But even when relevant facts are known, integration with a partial or total disconnect can also occur. As a character, Stitch has an alien origin—that is, alien to Earth. The creators of the animation film  Lilo and Stitch originally intended the narrative to be set in Kansas. But the plot was shifted to Hawai‘i where a Hawaiian family adopts Stitch. The family was portrayed as dysfunctional and impoverished by a failing American economy. The long-standing reasons for these conditions—the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy, col...
Read more