Paper short abstract

This paper takes gardens in the Torres Islands, North Vanuatu, as instantiations of broader ideas about growth, creation, and temporality in a small island society. The aim is to think about effort and growth in holistic frames.

Paper long abstract

In this paper I will discuss the concept of growth and temporality in the Torres Islands, Vanuatu, through the lens of gardening. I want to explore key ideas of growth, process, beauty and temporality by focusing on how the members of this small island society give shape to their main food-producing spaces. I am especially interested in viewing gardens as instantiations of broader processes of human-environmental transformation. I also want to direct my exploration towards a discussion of local ideas about making things, about manufacturing in the strict sense of the term (as in things made with the hands, Lat. 'manus'). Thus, I hope to employ gardening, in the sense of humanised landscaping, as a point of entry to a discussion about broader, holistic frames for thinking about environment, temporality, creation and value.I will draw on contributions to environmental anthropology and historical ecology which highlight social process, materiality, and transformation.