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: More than two decades ago, Marshall Sahlins reminded us that Oceania’s Islands have a history. They also have a memory. Anthropologists and other social researchers often deal with the problem how to actively turn orally transmitted memories into written or audiovisual representations. But in fact, researchers are much more involved than that:...
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... Around the same time, other Oceanian scholars such as Vilsoni Hereniko (2000, 90) also voted for more collaboration between members of the two groups in the future embracing the different ways of know ledge production of white/foreign/out sider and Pacific/native persons. Two examples of fruitful collaboration projects between European researchers and Indigenous communities took place around the same time and are brilliantly discussed by Pigliasco and Lipp (2011). Guido Carlo Pigliasco is an Italian anthro pologist who has studied and taught at the University of Hawai'i (University of Hawai'i 2022c), and Thorolf Lipp is a German visual anthropologist (see http://www.thorolflipp. ...
In Oceania, as elsewhere, power relations in knowledge production have been highly debated for many decades. Oceanian anthropologists have developed challenging proposals to decolonise anthropology and academia in Oceania at large. Nevertheless, insights from this region do not figure prominently in recent theoretical discussions about coloniality and decolonisation “about the subaltern” (Grosfoguel 2007, 211). By focusing on the long-lasting Oceanian discourse in a Swiss peer-reviewed journal, this article aims to contribute to the decolonisation of Swiss academia by proposing an anthropology “with and from a subaltern perspective” (Grosfoguel 2007, 211). Drawing on recent online research, and experiences with teaching the anthropology of Oceania, this article familiarises a European readership with Indigenous anthropologists from Oceania, and their struggles with our discipline. It looks at Indigenous scholars’ reflections about and propositions for different ways of knowledge production and Indigenous research methods. The article concludes with suggestions to further the decolonisation process within (Swiss) academia.
... Drawing on a decade of direct observations of cultural mapping and policymaking regarding Fiji's cultural heritage (Pigliasco 2007(Pigliasco , 2009a(Pigliasco , 2009b(Pigliasco , 2011(Pigliasco , 2012a, in this chapter I offer a commentary on the work-in-progress efforts, challenges and paradoxes encountered by Fiji policymakers and their consultants in the process of turning thick lore into soft law, inventorying both the materiality and intangibility of iTaukei (indigenous Fijian) cultural heritage and estimating its socially and emotionally ascribed value-one of the most elusive concepts encountered by legal scholars, for questions of 'value as morality' cannot be avoided (see Otto and Willerslev 2013: 15). 6 Heritage or trademark regimes? ...
... Envisioning a set of principles, guidelines and procedures that regulate and valuate cultural resources and human capital with an increasing emphasis on governance priorities, market ideology and global tourism, the idea of heritage regimes is inescapably linked to the gradual UNESCOisation 7 and bureaucratisation, or 'managerialist gaze' (Coombe and Weiss 2015: 46), of Pacific Island heritage, making visible and tangible the intangible. I actually can't help but view this chapter as a fated sequel to my timid concerns expressed five years ago in 'Are the grassroots growing?' (Pigliasco 2011). The risk of UNESCOisation triggering friction and conflict between the different scales and actors involved, as in the Fiji Airways case, is now a doomed reality. ...
... From its inception, cultural mapping in Fiji promised to be more than just creating an inventory of cultural sites, cultural rituals and traditional knowledge, as its process involves consultation, assessment and information gathering. 19 As in the case of the Solomon Islands, as presented by Lawrence Foana'ota and Geoffrey White, the project obviously had to face and challenge 'the continuing influence of European visions of culture as premodern "tradition" signified by objects and activities to be collected and preserved' (2011: 291; see also Pigliasco and Lipp 2011). Designed as a collaborative process involving face-to-face, culturally protocolled dialogues and interviews between stakeholders and trained indigenous Fijian researchers, the project, regardless of Fiji's political turmoil, remained on track. ...
... Plus we weren't sure how since only Felix had the know--how to do it and until a few years ago nobody except him owned a laptop in Dakuibeqa. More disturbingly, my previous work on a documentary film in the shark callers' Kontu Village in New Ireland (Pigliasco and Francalanci 1993) had planted several bugs in my head about "truth," "objectivity," and "our control" over images (Pigliasco and Lipp 2011). 4 After a modest local success, and a couple of interviews on Fiji 1 TV and for the Fiji Sun, despite our efforts at scaling and improving the existing project for wider uptake by Sawau community members on Beqa, in Fiji, and outside Fiji, we were technically and theoretically at a dead end. ...
... A key element is to distinguish cultural property from intellectual property by comparing the type of relationship that exists between a person and a commodity (Ahmed, Aylwin, and Coombe 2009:318-319) which often translates more into "custodianship" than "ownership" (Pigliasco 2007(Pigliasco , 2010(Pigliasco , 2011. Realizing that a total reliance on superimposed model laws and transnational convention would be insufficient to resolve core issues of identification of cultural heritage ownership, Fiji policymakers introduced the idea of first having in place an ad hoc, Fijian language digital database of traditional knowledge and expressions of culture, shifting the focus from economy to social capital; in other words, establishing links between digital and social relationships. ...
... In sum, collaborative ethnography as discussed in this literature is presented as a holistic methodological approach that draws attention to the ethics of researcherresearched coexperiences that shape fieldwork co-understandings, co-interpretations and co-written texts. It has been taken up to a lesser or greater extent in a number of contemporary and historical accounts of ethnographic projects (Buford May and Pattilo-McCoy 2000;Gillespie 2007;Kleinknecht 2006;Leary 2007;Liska Belgrave and Smith 2002;Marjukka Collin et al. 2008;Obermeyer 2007;Pigliasco and Lipp 2011). Lassiter's guide however, does not specifically address research collaboration between members of research teams comprising more than one researcher, which team ethnography does. ...
Collaboration in ethnography can describe vastly different relationships between individual researchers, research team members, the people they study, and those on whom they rely for background information, support and fieldwork data. This chapter traces a number of historical trajectories of collaboration in ethnography through two terms that consistently appear in the literature: collaborative ethnography and team ethnography. It first defines each term through the work of key authors, outlines how collaboration is understood and practiced according to these definitions, and references sample publications associated with each in tabulated form. It then locates the authors’ approach to doing ethnography in teams within this literature, explicating the similarities and differences to these documented understandings. The chapter can be used as a reading guide to the chapters that follow as well as the suggested readings in the appendices.
... Second, there is an urgent need to work on a theoretical and methodological framework for medializing intangible heritage, which will help to avoid superfluous data production and enable the transmission and creation of knowledge. Third, existing institutional structures and funding programmes must be made aware of the 12 For a discussion on questions pertaining to indigenous intellectual property rights see WIPO (2011); Lipp and Pigliasco (2011);Sherman (2010). special role that audiovisual media play in the intangible heritage memory-making process. ...
... The vilavilairevo (literally "jumping into the earth oven") is a dramatic ceremony traditionally performed only by members of the Naivilaqata clan of the Sawau people on the island of Beqa, and is a prime example of a propitiation ritual that has become commodified to suit the requirements of tourism (Pigliasco, 2007(Pigliasco, , 2009a(Pigliasco, , 2010(Pigliasco, , 2012. Elsewhere (Pigliasco, 2007(Pigliasco, , 2009b(Pigliasco, , 2010Pigliasco and Lipp, 2011), I have observed that despite the changed context, the Sawau performers of vilavilairevo perceive an astonishing degree of continuity between the old and the new situations. While the masawe (cordyline rhizomes: Cordyline fruticosa and C. terminalis) essential to the original ritual and its offering to the veli (madrali) are no longer part of it, the practice's touristic allure and consequent value as a product have become its subsistence dimension. ...
This paper is a critical analysis of the rapid changes that have been taking place within the Sawau community on the Island of Beqa, Fiji, over the past ten years. The Fijian firewalking ceremony (vilavilairevo) traditionally performed only by members of the Sawau people is a prime example of a propitiation ritual that has become commodified to suit the requirements of tourism. More recently, the reproduction of tradition among the Sawau and their vilavilairevo practice is causing an unprecedented dogmatic schism between Fiji's Methodist Church and two Pentecostal churches. Over the last two centuries, the "gift" of firewalking has transmuted itself into a sociocultural tool that has consistently indigenized the power of the foreign, allowing its custodians to locally sustain their community and to gain a reach and respect across the nation and beyond. To disentangle the intertwined topics of tradition and change on the Island of Beqa, and understand whose cultural views and values are being privileged or debased, this paper pays close attention to the Christian cultural dynamics and social tensions surrounding the vilavilairevo created by a denominational opposition swiftly reshaping local notions of heritage, social sentiment, and social capital.
This paper presents a mode of collaboration between a researcher and research assistant for ethnographic data collection. We describe our experience as a researcher, who previously conducted fieldwork in Egypt but is now largely situated in the United States due to having young children, and a Cairo-based research assistant, who conducted participant observation of everyday practices of buying and eating subsidized bread for the researcher’s book project on bread, wheat, and security in Egypt. We position our narratives of this process side-by-side, interspersed by joint reflections, addressing questions regarding power asymmetries, the distribution of benefits, and what makes research collaborations work well. We argue that partnering in observation brings the benefit of more than one way of seeing and thinking through data. Moreover, we propose that this form of collaboration can be an effective strategy for researchers for whom continuous presence in their fieldsite is not possible.
This uniquely in-depth book offers a blow-by-blow account of the sometimes problematic dynamics of conducting collaborative fieldwork in ethnography. Tracing the interplay between co-researchers at various points of contact in both professional and personal relations, the analysis draws out the asymmetries which can develop among team members nominally working towards the same ends. It details the often complex dialogues that evolve in an attempt to navigate conflicting interests, such as team members’ resistances to particular methodological ‘recipes’ or research protocols. The authors show that such debates can create an open forum to negotiate new practices.
A key element of this publication is that it goes beyond an analysis of more traditional power relations in research teams comprising members at different academic pay grades. As well as drawing attention to gender-related dynamics in research collaborations, the authors use themselves as an exemplar to demonstrate how differences in age, experience, knowledge, professional skills, and background can be exploited to generate positive outcomes constituting much more than the apparent sum of their parts. In doing so, the authors reveal the delightful, surprising, and yet challenging aspects of research collaboration that are often absent from the qualitative literature.
