Ways of the place : history, cosmology and material culture in North Pentecost, Vanuatu
Date
2003
Authors
Taylor, John Patrick
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
Ways of the place explores social, spatial and historical consciousness among the Sia Raga people of North Pentecost. In doing so it seeks to convey a sense of the intimate relationship between past, present, place and person that characterises this region of northern Vanuatu. Core arguments centre on the analysis of an apparently isomorphic structure that permeates across Sia Raga interpretations of history, cosmos and social practice, such as are made apparent in local written and oral texts, biological understandings and material culture. Rather than appearing as merely static, images that echo this structure incorporate aetiologies of growth, change, conflict and re-generation. The analysis of these central Sia Raga concepts, images and critical strategies bears relevance to ongoing anthropological debates concerning structure and history, and the relation between languages of time and space. For the Sia Raga, trees provide a key narrative device to understandings of history, both recent and "deep", particularly as these relate to notions of social and physical space. The narrative qualities of trees are further manifested in the profound social and cosmological knowledge that adheres within the architectonics of houses. Trees (and houses) embody qualities of autochthony and foundation, but also of growth and trajectory, and thus incorporate both solid and fluid qualities within the same image. Knowledge of the shaping of trees, involving the upward growth of a central trunk from which branches bifurcate on each side, is central to Sia Raga interpretive strategies. The notion of "sides" (tavalun) reflects the important Sia Raga idea of ambivalent dualism - a tense relation between equal and opposing sides - that is articulated through the concept of wasi: to be "tighdy bound", "entangled' or "stuck". Wasi implicated not only in relation to indigenous divisions - of moieties, male and female, the "lived world" and "other-world"- but is extended to reflect crucially on social and political-economic relations between Sia Raga and foreigners (tuturam), and of the relation between what are viewed as locally authentic "ways of the place" (alengan vanua) and the ways of outsiders (alengan tuturam).
Description
Keywords
Citation
Collections
Source
Type
Thesis (PhD)
Book Title
Entity type
Access Statement
License Rights
Restricted until
Downloads
File
Description