The Tree and the Canoe: Roots and Mobility in Vanuatu Societies

Bonnemaison, Joël

doi:10.1111/apv.261003

Cited by 54 publications

(18 citation statements)

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“…As for many Melanesian peoples, Kanak cultural identity 'is a geographic identity that flows from the memories and values attached to places'. 38 A Kanak clan is a descent group connected to a single founding ancestor who emerged from a specific geographic location from which his descendants dispersed following a precise itinerary. 39 Recognizing and reproducing the customary bonds linking a clan together are profoundly important both for the perpetuation of the social group and the persons that comprise it.…”

Section: Blue Haumentioning

confidence: 99%

Turning niches into handles: Kanak youth, associations and the construction of an indigenous counter-public sphere

LeFevre

2013

Settler Colonial Studies

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Section: Blue Haumentioning

confidence: 99%

Turning niches into handles: Kanak youth, associations and the construction of an indigenous counter-public sphere

LeFevre

2013

Settler Colonial Studies

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“…Another humanist geographer, Bonnemaison, discusses mobility in Vanuatu by invoking the metaphor of the tree and the canoe -the latter being the symbol of mobility, the former the symbol of rootedness and stability. In crafting the canoe out of the tree we can see the apparently contradictory notion of moving in order to stay still is not contradictory at all, but that the two are intimately connected such that they constitute and are constitutive of each other (Bonnemaison, 1985). So too can men and women be seen as constitutive of each other because men are compared to a tree, while women are compared to birds.…”

Section: Metaphors and Local Epistemologies -Whispered Wordsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Of social construction, politics and biology: population geographies in the Pacific

Underhill‐Sem¹

1999

Asia Pacific Viewpoint

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Sustained challenges by third world, black and feminist scholars have unsettled the established agenda of the social sciences in the 1990s. Unfortunately, population geographies in the Pacific have failed to engage with these debates. By avoiding the metaphysical challenges posed by contemporary theoretical debates, often by people from previously marginalised groups, population geographies have failed to provide the spark necessary for the dynamic expansion of ideas. However, an analysis of population geographies in the Pacific, almost all of which are mobility studies, reveals important contributions for advancing a more critical population geography. This paper begins with a critical review of population geography in general then looks more specifically at population geographies, mostly mobility studies, in the Pacific. It advances the argument that the humanist geographers Chapman and Bonnemaison have made critical contributions in reconceptualising population mobility. Further advances would benefit from an engagement with feminist geography and post‐structural discourse analysis.

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“…This prohibition was abolished just before independence, opening the road for Islanders to stay in town. Ni-Vanuatu migration patterns had been circular; people mostly returned home after periods of time in other places (Bedford 1977;Bonnemaison 1985). Following independence this pattern began shifting to one-way migration, or permanent settlement in town (Haberkorn 1989).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Planting Roots, Making Place: Urban Autochthony in Port Vila Vanuatu

Kraemer

2020

Oceania

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A contentious issue for Pacific Islanders, as well as researchers of the Pacific Islands, is ni‐Vanuatu notions of ‘belonging’ to urban centres. Previous research in Vanuatu has shown that despite generations of people born and raised in Port Vila, the nation's capital, the urban centre is not generally perceived as a ‘place’ to which urban migrants can say they are from. For many, exclaiming that one is ‘from’ town is tantamount to admitting one has ‘no place’. This paper, based on fieldwork among a group of urban young men in Freswota, a residential community of Port Vila, argues that in contrast to this, Freswota young men are generating a new locative identity. Their urban community rather than their parents' home island places is emerging as their primary location of belonging and the source of their sense of self, personhood and social identification. As such, these young men are the urban autochthones of the country.

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The Tree and the Canoe: Roots and Mobility in Vanuatu Societies

Cited by 54 publications

References 0 publications

Turning niches into handles: Kanak youth, associations and the construction of an indigenous counter-public sphere

Turning niches into handles: Kanak youth, associations and the construction of an indigenous counter-public sphere

Of social construction, politics and biology: population geographies in the Pacific

Planting Roots, Making Place: Urban Autochthony in Port Vila Vanuatu

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