The politics of tradition in colonial situations

The politics of tradition in colonial situations

Ryan Schram
ANTH 3603: Melanesian worlds
ryan.schram@sydney.edu.au
Social Sciences Building 410 (A02)
Week of April 12, 2021 (Week 6)

Slides available at http://anthro.rschram.org/2700/2021/6

Main reading: Keesing (1968); Keesing (1982); Keesing (1997)

Other reading: Dobrin (2020); Ritchie (2020)

References and further reading

Dobrin, Lise M. 2020. “A ‘Nation of Villages’ and a Village ‘Nation State’: The Arapesh Model for Bernard Narokobi’s Melanesian Way.” The Journal of Pacific History 55 (2): 165–86. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223344.2020.1759405.

Keesing, Roger M. 1968. “Chiefs in a Chiefless Society: The Ideology of Modern Kwaio Politics.” Oceania 38 (4): 276–80. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40329737.

———. 1982. “Kastom and Anticolonialism on Malaita: ‘Culture’ as Political Symbol.” Mankind 13 (4): 357–73. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1835-9310.1982.tb01000.x.

———. 1997. “Tuesday Chiefs Revisited.” In Chiefs Today: Traditional Pacific Leadership and the Postcolonial State, edited by Geoffrey M. White and Lamont Lindstrom, 253–63. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.

Ritchie, Jonathan. 2020. “From the Grassroots: Bernard Narokobi and the Making of Papua New Guinea’s Constitution.” The Journal of Pacific History 55 (2): 235–54. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223344.2020.1759408.