Anthropology Colloquium Series Fall Semester 2006

"Revisiting Melanesian Kastom: Cultural Production at the Solomon Islands National Museum," Geoffrey White, Anthropology Professor. This paper offers a brief history of formations of public culture in and around the Solomon Islands national museum. The presentation will report on work with Lawrence Foanaota (Director, SI National Museum) to trace a genealogy of 'culture', 'kastom', and 'tradition' in the practices of Solomon Islands museums and cultural centers. The national museum has its origins in the world of colonial collecting and preservation. At independence new discourses of tradition emerge in the service of national identity and development. More recently, in the Melanesian "arc of instability," constructions of tradition acquire new valences as a means of unification and healing. The paper concludes with some reflections about the role of museums and cultural centers as contact zones for local and (trans)national ideologies of culture.

Geoffrey White is Professor of Anthropology at UH Manoa and Senior Fellow in the Pacific Islands Development Program of the East-West Center.

Event Sponsor
Anthropology, University of Hawaii at Manoa

Ongoing Events