The participants, mainly anthropologists and historians, will bring their ethnographic and historical research data from Melanesia, a culturally diverse area in the Pacific. We focus on Melanesia because the distinctly different ways people in Melanesia experience time will challenge our European assumptions and habitual attitudes. Challenging what we take for granted will greatly stimulate critical reflections on theories of time and history that mostly originate in European and will enable us to gain much needed distance to make substantive theoretical advances.
During the two days there will 14 short talks followed by discussion. There will be no separate panels as we are keen to detect syntheses between concepts and approaches.
Speakers
Thursday, 10 November
09:00-09:45 Opening by Jaap Timmer and Ton Otto: Historicity, regimes, and Melanesia
09:45-10:30 Jan Ifversen: History has a new story
10:30-11:30 Tea/Coffee break
11:00-11:45 Eric Hirsch: Synchronisation and power: Perspectives on Melanesian historicities
11:45-12:30 Michael W. Scott: The Were-Sharks of Owa Rafa: Thoughts on totemic historicities from the Southeast Solomon Islands
12:30-13:30 Lunch break
13:30-14:15 Christiane Falck: Diverging and merging regimes of historicity at the Sepik River, Papua New Guinea
14:15-15:00 Anna-Karina Hermkens: When Mary breaks into time: Temporal regimes and experiences in conflict and post-conflict Bougainville
15:00-15:30 Tea/Coffee break
15:30-16:15 Borut Telban: Kunaypa historicity: conceptual specificity of temporal reciprocity in the Sepik, Papua New Guinea
Reception and dinner
Friday, 11 November
09:00-09:45 Chris Ballard – (via Zoom): Hesiod amongst the Huli of Papua New Guinea: Moral decline and epochal transformation
09:45-10:30 Nayahamui Rooney – (via Zoom): Why was she buried there? Snippets into buried women’s histories
10:30-11:00 Tea/Coffee break
11:00-11:45 Ton Otto: Kastam versus Kalsa: The historicity of two contrasting notions and practices of heritage in Manus, Papua New Guinea
11:45-12:30 Jaap Timmer: Histories lost and found: Kastom and state in the historicity for Malaita’s theocracy, Solomon Islands
12:30-13:30 Lunch break
13:30-14:15 Fanny Wonu Veys: The display of ancestral remains and the historicity of indigenous sensibilities
14:15-15:00 Melissa Demian – (via Zoom): Seismic historicity in Lae, Papua New Guinea
15:00-15.30 Tea/Coffee break
15:30–16:00 Christina Toren: Reflections and conclusions
16:00–16:30 General discussion
Reception and dinner
The workshop is open to all, researchers, students and industry and others interested in the topic. The workshop is free for all participants, but registration is mandatory.
Registration deadline: 8 November 2022.
The workshop has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (through AIAS), The Institute of Culture and Society (Aarhus University), and the Carlsberg Foundation
