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- Convenor:
-
Grant McCall
(University of Sydney)
Send message to Convenor
- Format:
- Panels
- Location:
- Ligertwood 228
- Sessions:
- Thursday 14 December, -
Time zone: Australia/Adelaide
Short Abstract:
Peoples of Oceania are in constant motion, between their islands and conceptually as the tsunami of globalisation delights and worries peoples in small places with big aspirations. Contributions that approach shifting Oceania are invited, for generalist and specialist interest.
Long Abstract:
Peoples of Oceania are in constant motion, between their islands and conceptually as the tsunami of globalisation delights and worries peoples in small places with big aspirations. Contributions that approach shifting Oceania are invited, for generalist and specialist interest.
The very specific and the multi-sited are in people's minds and flow from their experiences; biography can become an institution and what is the focus today can become the nostalgia of the past that (maybe) never was.
"States" are both states of mind and jurisdictions, colonial and neo-colonial; historical and contemporary; anxious and reassuring.
Whilst the usual paper presentation format is the most expected, other proposals also should be discussed.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 13 December, 2017, -Helen Lee (La Trobe University)
Paper short abstract:
The Tonga National Leadership Development Forum is attempting to influence future leadership in Tonga through formal training of the younger generation of Tonga's royal and noble families. Shifts in the political landscape of Tonga make the future of traditional leadership a contentious issue.
Paper long abstract:
Democratic reforms in Tonga in recent years have called into question the role of the nobility, who have lost significant power in Parliament but retain control, with the royal family, of all of Tonga's land. Their positions in Tonga's social hierarchy were established in the 1875 Constitution from the pre-contact chiefly system, and they continue to be treated as a traditional elite with considerable formal and informal power over the 'commoners' of Tonga. They are strongly resisting any further undermining of their authority and status, and despite its moves towards democracy Tonga remains a constitutional monarchy in which the king holds executive power. My paper looks at the younger generation of Tonga's royal and noble families, many of whom have joined the Young Tongan Traditional Leaders group which has been facilitated since 2012 by the Tonga National Leadership Development Forum (TNLDF), funded by DFAT via the Pacific Leadership Program. I explore how the TNLDF is attempting to influence future leadership in Tonga through its work with these young people, many of whom spend much of their lives outside Tonga, struggle with the Tongan language and are sheltered from the realities of Tonga's fragile economy and other problems.
Makiko Nishitani (La Trobe University)
Paper short abstract:
Settled communities of Pacific farmworkers are increasing in horticultural areas in Australia, and many second-generation Pacific youths experience farm work while growing up. This paper discusses their experiences in rural Victoria and the implications for their identities and future careers.
Paper long abstract:
Long before the implementation of the Seasonal Worker Programme that officially brought casual farmworkers from the Pacific to horticultural areas in Australia, Pacific people including Tongans, Samoans, Cook Islanders and Fijians had already created settled communities in these rural towns. Our fieldsite is Mildura and its surrounds, where many Pacific people have moved in search of opportunities to secure employment. Although seasonal work is temporal by nature and does not provide a stable income throughout the year, one can potentially earn more than $1,000 a week during a picking season in summer, which may lead some people to accept the precarious aspect of the farm work. Settled communities of Pacific people who work on farms are increasing and there are many second-generation Pacific youths who are growing up surrounded by vineyards. The future careers of these young people are of great concern for many first generation migrants, and there is a shared idea that casual farmwork is only for first generation migrants, Australian-born youths should ideally be working 'inside' - be it an office or warehouse - rather than under the sun 'on the block'. However, Pacific youth in Mildura find it difficult to obtain a job other than seasonal work. Drawing on fieldwork since 2014, this paper examines experiences of young Pacific Islanders who grow up in rural Australia, exploring how the rural environment and their experiences impact on their identity and aspirations.
Camille Rouliere
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores how composers use music to transform our relationship with water near the Murray Mouth. Involving interactions across ethno-and anthropocentric boundaries, music sustains new languages of awareness and care which (re)compose space through polyrhythms of ontological significance.
Paper long abstract:
Drawing on the work of philosophers Henri Lefebvre, Édouard Glissant and Gaston Bachelard on rhythm, relation and water, this presentation explores how several composers, sound artists and performers use music to reimagine and transform our relationships with watery areas near the Murray Mouth. By engaging in composition processes which require exchanges and interactions across and beyond ethno- and anthropocentric boundaries, these artists redefine musical creation as a form of recuperative and restorative collaboration. Sounds become memories, and musicians are historians tasked with retrieving residues and shards of acoustic meanings in profoundly disfigured (arrhythmic) areas. Saltwaters are at the centre of these composition processes: stagnant or lapping, they reverberate and speak through the music by simultaneously contracting and unfolding the space-time continuum. Their sonic viscosity enables the artists to hear (recover) resonances and echoes, and to consequently reveal and expose polyrhythms with which to compose beyond the exploitative shadows of areas devastated by salinity. Infused with saltwaters, these repetitive acoustic layers craft an acoustic experience which generates transformative encounters by stimulating emphatic and visceral communions between listeners and place. Such music thus shifts and reconfigures how listeners perceive these areas. As such, it (re)invents and sustains new languages of awareness and care which are cognisant (rather than defiant) of salinity. These languages do not occupy space, but (re)compose and nurture it through rhythmic accumulations and proliferations of ontological significance, as both the environment and its traditional custodians, the Ngarrindjeri Nation, contribute to their formation.