Research Priorities
Regionales Forschungsgebiet:
Ozeanien (Melanesien und Mikronesien; insbesondere: Papua-Neuguinea, Fiji und Kiribati)
Thematische Forschungsschwerpunkte:
Klimawandel und forcierte Migration; Diaspora, Raum, Biographieforschung, Gedächtnis, Religion, Performanz , Kolonialismus, Macht und Widerstand
Projekte
- A Sea of Environmental Refugees? Oceania in an Age of Climate Change
- Klimawandel und forcierte Migration in Ozeanien (mit Schwerpunkt auf Ort und Identität in Kiribati)
- Forschungsvorhaben zu Diaspora, Gedächtnis und Mimesis bei den Banabans auf Rabi Island in Fiji
- Forschung zur zeitgenössischen Transkulturation von Kava (piper methysticum) im Zentralpazifik (insbesondere Kiribati)
- Biographieforschung mit den Ngaing in Papua-Neuguinea
- Langzeitforschung zu Ritual und religiösem Wandel bei den Ngaing in Papua-Neuguinea
- A Sea of Environmental Refugees? Oceania in an Age of Climate Change
The forecast effects of anthropogenic climate change will transform Oceania profoundly in coming decades.
Especially the interplay of such factors as extreme weather events, impairments to water resources and food security, and a rising sea-level, may render many coastal regions and low-lying islands uninhabitable in the not-too-distant future. Here I focus on the dominant discourse of forced migration, resettlement and diaspora. My initial concern is to assess how Epeli Hau'ofa’s model of a new, enlarged Oceania stands up under these altered conditions. Although I continue to think Hau'ofa’s counter-narrative significant and correct, I shall argue that smallness in the 21st century does not necessarily have to carry negative implications; on the contrary, and with especial reference to the politics and practice of adapting to the consequences of climate change in the region, it is one of the most important resources at the Pacific islanders’ disposal. I combine my appraisal with a critical discussion of the "environmental refugee” concept, before addressing the problematic that arises when mass displacement and relocation are fixed on as priorities for reacting and adjusting to climate change in Oceania. - Social Mimesis, Commemoration, and Ethnic Performance: Fiji Banaban Representations of the Past
A society’s mimetic practice is of pivotal importance for creating (and further developing) binding representations of a collective past. The concept of social mimesis is based on the interplay of corporeality, internalization, and performance. Therefore social interactions can be construed as a field of relationships in which acting persons incorporate, interpret, and perform historically and culturally prefigured discourses and practices. Such mimetic practice also takes in the appropriation and re-enactment of representations of the past by social actors. My chief focus here will be the annual commemoration of the Banabans, an ethnic group from the Central Pacific, who were resettled on Fiji’s Rabi Island some sixty years ago. What began as a thanksgiving service marking the anniversary of the Banabans’ arrival on their new island developed, as the decades went by, into an official festival of commemoration lasting several days. The program for the festival has begun in recent years to feature ethnic performances as well. These are dance theater spectacles in which Banabans enact episodes from their society’s precolonial and colonial past. Thus "The Arrival of Christianity," the piece I select for analysis, treats how religious tradition has been transformed on Banaba. Based on this articulation of home island, religious tradition, and Christianity, I show how by means of ethnic performances core domains of Banaban identity are constituted, interwoven, and handed on as embodied memories. Dance theater and commemorative festival on Rabi Island are central to the mimetic practice of a diaspora society bent on preserving in collective memory the history of their island of origin and the fact of their survival. Social mimesis is instrumental here in reclaiming the past as a place of ruptures and continuities alike. - A Promised Land in the Diaspora: Christian Religion, Social Memory, and Identity among the Banabans in Fiji
Religion influences the process of constituting place and identity in the Pacific diaspora. The Banabans, originally from the central Pacific but relocated in 1945 to Rabi Island in Fiji, have linked a politics of emplacement and commemoration to Christian beliefs and practices. This linkage lets Banabans anchor in social memory (and so transmit to future generations) not only the knowledge they possess of Banaba, their original island home, but also a collective self-image of being at once victim and survivor of colonial exploitation, dispossession, and displacement; further, the interplay of identity politics and religion serves them as a tool of empowerment and repositioning in the diaspora. I shall focus on certain public representations of the past in which Banabans relate the time of war, dispersal and resettlement on Rabi to the biblical narrative of liberation from Egyptian bondage and exodus to the Promised Land. The identification of the settler generation with the Old Testament Israelites corresponds to the Banaban view of the past, in which the community’s survival is attributed to divine providence, the better to reclaim, in the course of this construction, Rabi Island as a god-given second homeland, the Banabans’ own Promised Land. Finally, this Christian-based practice and politics of constituting place and identity in the diaspora needs to be seen against the background of a strengthening of ethno-nationalist currents within Fijian society, which, at the regional level, is working to undermine the legitimacy of Banaban claims to ownership rights over Rabi.
In this project I focus on the life of John Kikang, a man who played a key role in modernising his region of origin in north-eastern Papua New Guinea. John Kikang's determination to create a chronologically ordered life history
in which he presented himself as an individual agent cannot be separated from this process of modernisation.His autobiographical narratives and writings permitted Kikang to highlight his capacity as intermediary between the colonial world of the whites, his rural home in the Rai Coast hinterland, and the dream zones of the Christian Beyond. My approach to Kikang's life story takes its cue from three modes of construction. First, I combine his written notes with transcriptions of his narratives in such a way as to allow inter-referentiality, yet without depriving either of its autonomy. Second, I respond to Kikang's endeavours to fashion for himself an individual life story which is chronologically ordered. Third, if I reproduce selected dialogues between Kikang and myself, it is because I consider this to be an apt way to highlight our co-constructing of his life story. The arguments I adduce concerning representation are then linked to the issue of what relevance alterity has for the making of Pacific biographies.