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| ISBN-13: | 9781927322710 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Otago University Press |
| Publication date: | 08/05/2016 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 408 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
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Oceanian Journeys and Sojourns
Home Thoughts Abroad
By Judith A. Bennett
Otago University Press
Copyright © 2015 Judith A. BennettAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-927322-71-0
CHAPTER 1
SEEKING THE HEART OF MOBILITY
JUDITH A. BENNETT
Pacific leaders must have a sense of pride in themselves and their cultural histories in order to be able to survive the turbulences of their modern environment. This means that you must be able to find yourselves in your cultural histories and indigenous references before tackling the references of others.
Tui Atua Tupua Tamasese Taisi (2010)
The essays in this book seek to explore some of the vast range of journeying within Oceania. Journeys 'through space and time', to use Eric Waddell's words in this work, emerge most clearly in studies of movement in specific island settings. Such settings are pivotal in the human production of cultures and ways of knowing. Following this introduction to present our contributors and Murray Chapman in part one, the essays are organised around these two central themes; part two considers the meanings of mobility in Oceania, and part three addresses the meanings of cultures in the region in terms of artefacts, practices, ways of knowing and research.
We learn of Murray Chapman's journey via an interview with David Gegeo, who shares Murray's abiding interest in indigenous epistemologies (Gegeo and Watson-Gegeo 2001). Just as Oceanians do, Murray, who lives now in Hilo on the 'Big Island' of Hawai'i, has always carried his home place with him through space and time. His working-class origins, emphasising the value of fairness reinforced by the social democracy of a kinder Aotearoa-New Zealand (as it was before the late 1980s), have left their cultural imprint on Murray. His intellectual and research journey has traversed Oceania several times. From the dirt floor of a humble Maori home in Murupara, New Zealand, to the highly polished linoleum-tiled floors of the University of Washington, Seattle, to the split-palm flooring of leaf houses in Tasimauri, Guadalcanal, and on to the cured-concrete hallways of the University of Hawai'i, he has walked the talk and researched, but listening all the while. He has done his own share of 'circulating' around the region, attending many conferences where he has contributed as an academic, as well as taking up a number of visiting fellowships at Cornell, New York, Liverpool, Noumea and Honiara. Then – the glorious luxury of it – as an emeritus professor in theoretical retirement, he went to listen to the young and the bright at conferences in Apia in 2002, Suva and Dunedin in 2006, Papeete in 2009 and Wellington in 2012. He last took a sojourn to the Solomons in 2009 to catch up and tok stori with old friends.
Journeys have been described as 'short-term migrations', 'movement', 'circulation', 'rural–urban drift' and evidence of 'depopulation'. But journeys are more than these terms imply, for although these concepts have proved useful for geographers and other social scientists from the 1950s to the early 1980s, they can still connote forms of mechanistic and individualistic reaction to capitalist pressures. Thus, in this model derived from neoclassic economics, individuals and populations from so-called less-developed regions move in certain directions towards developed labour markets because of external or etic forces, such as the lack of local earning opportunities and/or the need to improve their standard of living (Lewis 1954).
In the Pacific these factors, with a dash of dependency theory, were explicit in the dominant paradigm of the MIRAB economies – where migration, remittances, aid and an oversized bureaucracy were seen as the means of financial survival for small island countries from 1985 for a decade and beyond (Bertram and Watters 1985; Barcham et al 2009). Those who chose 'migration' were characterised generally as being in transition between the periphery and the centre, 'out of place' from their point of origin and victims of 'social displacement'. This kind of movement can be measured statistically in several ways, most commonly with censuses. Such concepts and statistics rarely capture 'the processes as well as the structure of movement dynamics and how these have operated over time' (Chapman 1978, 561), but as metaphors of movement they have powerfully influenced economist government planners, whose policies may then reflect a false reality (Chapman 1991, 274).
While economic factors are often part of the motivation, journeys are something more and of wider compass. As a result of his 1960s microscale studies of 'circulation' on south Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands, human geographer Murray Chapman found that, in practice, people journeyed to and from a specific place for a variety of socially mediated reasons (1970). In a seminar searching for other ways of conceiving movement/circulation in 1978, Chapman hinted at the need for a better articulation of the context within which it occurs, a theme he reiterated in later work and encouraged his students to explore (1978, 562–63; Skeldon 1995, 92; Bedford 1999, 8). Longitudinal studies of movement over days and months, as critics of Chapman's method implied, are not of themselves enough to show 'how migration fits into a person's whole life' (Halfacree and Boyle 1995, 99). Aware of this, Chapman had broadened his scope from movements entailing absences of 24 hours or more to life biographies of movement (1971, 10–20; 1976). Well beyond his 1970s' hinting about context, Chapman in a seminal article in 1991 cited the work of students and colleagues to show that older descriptors of movement/journeys in Oceania did not tally with the holism of lived practice (1991). Oceanian scholars began more and more to apply their 'alternative ways of knowing' to the ebb and flow of people journeying across space and time, so humanising mobility's complexities (Chapman 1991, 1995).
Of journeys and sojourns
'Journey' is a Middle English word originally meaning a trip of a day; 'sojourn', closely related, meant one that was even briefer, less than a day's duration. As with cultures, so does the meaning of words change and evolve while translation of concepts is never exact. More recently, a journey may imply a lifetime and a sojourn can be part of it, a shorter stay in one location, but one that implies an intended continuation of a longer journey through time and space. Another connotation in the word 'journey' is the implied return home. This may be a final return or, with time, a sequence of leavings and returns to natal places. As David Gegeo reminds us, 'place' in all its forms relates to this – the geographical location of a home or natal place; whereas 'space' can be the location a person occupies while on their journey, while still 'inextricably tied to place' (2001, 495). For some the return may be in their lifetime or that of children or descendants because, for most Pacific people, there is always a connection to ancestral home places.
In recent decades, when they set out to journey beyond their islands, Pacific Islands people often have the potential to be permanent migrants, but few see themselves as such (Ahlburg and Brown 1998; Wright-Koteka 2006, 116–19; Connell 2008). Unlike the western Irish in the nineteenth century, they have no need for the equivalent of an 'American wake' – a ceremony similar to a wake for the dead but held for those migrating, almost certainly forever, to distant America or elsewhere. This Irish ceremony reinforced love of home, kin, religion and the desire to return for the glory of the family and the name of Ireland – supposing the traveller made good in the New World and could afford to return. Those who did not return would become potential contacts or links for relatives still to leave Ireland (Miller 1985, 489, 556–61). In spite of the very limited technology of communications and travel at the time, remittances to home, gifts ('a token of love') and letters sent both ways preserved ties. The migrants' imagined social space – often for several generations – was still that of Ireland and family but enacted in places far from the home to which few could return (Fitzpatrick 1995, 467–515, 614–20).
These days, modernity has vastly expanded the scope of journeying for the people of the Great Ocean, the Oceanians, as well as the rest of the world. More people travel and can travel further and more quickly and be in contact more readily than their ancestors, as the technologies of air travel and electronic communication shrink the gap of distance, in a sense enlarging the spaces for being part of a wider family. Imagined spaces, spaces of the heart and mind that carry place, have been materially extended especially since the 1950s and 1960s, far beyond the capabilities of 150 and more years ago. Like the Lapita progenitors of the Polynesians, who seem to have learned their navigation techniques in the 'voyaging corridor' of the seas around the island of New Guinea prior to about 3500 BP, once people know they are able to return they are more likely to venture forth (Irwin 1992, 18–30).
Mobility and stability
In part two, a number of the contributors have elucidated the several and nuanced motives for movement of people. They reveal that in specific societies even bald economic pressures are set within a context of sociocultural relations, and commonly are responses to, or expressions of, the sequence of life stages. People journey with a purpose that is culturally mediated and framed. Not all journeys are to distant destinations, as several of our contributors deftly reveal. Some are localised and brief while others, though localised, may last for many years.
Sa'iliemanu Lilomaiava-Doktor in her discussion of malaga or journeys reveals a wide range of Samoan journeys and sojourns – for marriage, birth, funerals, family gatherings and education, as well as routine things such as fishing, marketing and employment. These journeys are closely tied to the life stages of the people moving or to those of the people they go to be with. They are also bound to a person's responsibilities to the 'aiga or wider family and often to the village community, nu'u, and vice versa. Sa'iliemanu illuminates journeys within Samoa but makes it clear that Samoans now have a wider social universe located beyond Samoa in the Pacific 'rim' countries of the western United States and New Zealand. Enduring cultural imperatives adapt easily to modernity and its means of movement.
Improper journeyings occur too – wandering about, living off relatives, or seeking out unsanctioned sexual encounters. 'Unfocused wandering', around the town, say, can be transformed into a more positive sojourn if, for example, the person returns with benefits for his or her 'aiga or extended family. On the other hand, if a major social expectation is flouted, such as by serious theft or land disputes, enforced journeys may be required of the offenders to exclude them from the village.
A pivotal concept and frame to these malaga is the fa'aSamoa, the Samoan cultural way which, as Sa'iliemanu points out, is 'a set of interpretative practices' wherein common symbols and understanding are both shared and negotiated. The Samoan concept for social space, va, is central to how people relate and behave towards one another and thus to their identity within the 'aiga and beyond. Intrinsic to the fa'a-Samoa and to the wellbeing of the 'aiga is the idea of service and sharing. Samoans have socialised and harnessed inclinations towards individual selfishness in an insightful manner.
Reciprocity underlies all things in Samoa; likewise, in Satowan in the Caroline Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, where Lola Quan Bautista from Guam considers emic or insider understandings of mobility. In their ideal form, these are based on reciprocity and respect. Lola's lens brings into focus small journeys and sojourns highlighting the subtle conventions of movement during different life stages, and also between male and female. Small Satowan Island is 'a little world made cunningly' (Donne in Patrides 1985, 437). Although a world of movement, it also has its boundaries where certain people shall not move at certain times and stages of their own or others' lives. As in Samoa, there are proper and improper types of journeying – wandering to 'see the world' can soon become aimless or result in trouble for the person concerned. Here too, the consequences for inappropriate journeys are usually more portentous for the wellspring of life and land – the woman, and thus her family and reputation.
Lola elucidates the intricacies of community life but also is bound to her community. She uses her knowledge to benefit others and is an advisor for United Pacific Islanders Corporation, a non-profit body formed in 2012. Its purpose is to address the social and economic challenges faced by migrants in new, poorly serviced subdivisions on Guam. Many Chuuk and Yap people are settled in the subdivision of Gill-Baza near Yigo town, in northern Guam. Part of Lola's work has been the making of the film Breadfruit and Open Spaces, filmed to raise awareness of the developer's lack of responsibility towards this community following the local authority's threat of eviction (Bautista 2011, 2013).
Asenati Liki's study of the work of women, the Teine uli in Samoa, considers the descendants of Samoan women and Melanesian men who came to Samoa for work on copra plantations in the nineteenth century. It is a study of recent journeying for work by female kin within the framework of the 'aiga. Decisions to journey are a corporate choice, sometimes to benefit the individual but more often to benefit the group in some way, at least in economic terms and almost certainly in social worth and respect. It is an assertion, too, of how personhood emerges in social relationships and of the significance of women in society – significance not always understood by Western feminists whose emphasis is on the independence of the individual woman, rather than on their relational identity as part of a kinship group.
Asenati, as a Teine uli (dark-skinned woman), also tells of her own personal journey in Samoa and her studies in New Zealand, Fiji and Hawai'i, in an account grounded in societal and personal experience and knowledge. She also reminds us that while academic research may provide intellectual satisfaction for the researcher, unless it is meaningful and useful to the people it focuses upon it has little real social worth. This social worth is inextricably linked to the corporate responsibility of the 'aiga as well as that of Samoa itself – an essential societal practice that has bearing and implications on plans and programmes formulated in other places from a different cultural purview.
The peoples of Oceania must be among the most planned-for people on the globe. For decades, scarcely a month goes by without some well-meaning overseas government, aid agency or non-government organisation coming up with a plan or programme to develop something, ranging from wool spinning and weaving in New Guinea highland villages in the 1970s to, more recently, entrepreneurship, improving the status of women, and governance. For Samoa, providing a corrective cultural reference point for such aid-driven enthusiasms depends on careful scrutiny of such plans, government financial incentives for its own indigenous experts, and projects that acknowledge social change – such as enabling more women to hold leadership positions in the public sector (Liki Chan Tung et al 2013). Often in the past in much of the Pacific, foreign consultants have been preferred because they are funded by external aid agencies, therefore costing governments nothing – at least in monetary terms (Hunter 2010).
Sa'iliemanu, Lola and Asenati write of indigenous Oceanian societies and offer examples to illustrate specific points, but give the reader a more generalised perspective, almost a group portrait of emic patterns of journeys and various sojourns. Raymond Young, in contrast, provides a fine-grained study of specific Fijian people and, to many outsiders, their seemingly complex relationships with kin. He discusses how their journeys are always embodied, enacting connections and, in some cases, disconnections with the dominant pathways of Fijian identity: wakolo ni veiwekani – the pathway of blood, the connection to relatives by blood; and wakolo ni vanua – the pathway of land, associated with connections to the chiefs and the land. In this analysis of the essence of Fijian culture, past and present are linked in these pathways, which can be activated in several ways but have a fluidity that can respond to changed circumstances, as his intricate accounts show. These metaphors of movement and connection are ideational, but in their material embodiment they are templates for action as well as reflections of social and reciprocal transactions.
(Continues...)
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Table of Contents
Contents
Front Cover,Title Page,
Copyright,
List of illustrations,
Dedication,
Acknowledgements,
Part 1: People and Pacific Places,
1. Seeking the heart of mobility. JUDITH A. BENNETT,
2. Tasimauri sojourns and journeys: Interview with Murray Chapman. DAVID WELCHMAN GEGEO,
Part 2: Pacific People in Movement,
3. Journeyings: Samoan understandings of movement. SA'ILIEMANU LILOMAIAVA- DOKTOR,
4. Emic understandings of mobility: Perspectives from Satowan Atoll, Chuuk. LOLA QUAN BAUTISTA,
5. Women as kin: Working lives, living work and mobility among Samoan Teine uli. ASENATI LIKI,
6. Send me back to Lakeba: Cultural constructions of movement on a Fijian island. RAYMOND YOUNG,
7. Tuhu vera: My journeys, routes, places and identities. TARCISIUS TARA KABUTAULAKA,
8. The duress of movement: Reflections on the time of the ethnic tension, Solomon Islands. JULLY MAKINI,
Part 3: People, Culture and Research,
9. John Burke, historian and collector: Taking Solomon Islands back to the United States after World War II. JUDITH A. BENNETT,
10. Silences of the discourse: Maternal bodies in out-of-the-way places. YVONNE UNDERHILL-SEM,
11. Promoting research in a stubborn environment: The experiences of Solomon Islands, 1989–2009. GORDON LEUA NANAU,
12. 'Without sharing we will be like leaves blown with the wind' ERIC WADDELL,
Notes on contributors,
Abbreviations,
Bibliography,
Index,
Back Cover,