Oceania 

About: Oceania is an academic journal published by Wiley-Blackwell. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Politics & Kinship. It has an ISSN identifier of 0029-8077. Over the lifetime, 1641 publications have been published receiving 20280 citations. The journal is also known as: Oceania and Australia & Australia and Oceania.

Aboriginal territorial organization: estate, range, domain and regime*

Abstract: THIS paper discusses some aspects of Australian local organization which have recently come into dispute. In part it is prompted by an article (Hiatt, 1962) which misconstrues some general statements made by the late Professor A. R. Radcliffe-Brown many years ago. Both the original statements and the misconstructions require correction. There are, however, some genuine difficulties in the way of understanding the subject and these suggest that a fresh conceptualization is also needed.

On the theory and politics of cultural construction in the pacific

Abstract: The premise that culture is symbolically constructed or ' invented' has become a hallmark of social-science scholarship in the postmodern era. Cultural invention is part of the intellectual Zeitgeist of the 1980s and 1990s although not all of its invocations can be categorized as * postmodernist'. In the early 1980s anthropologists working independently in a number of Pacific Islands societies began to view 'culture' alternately, 'tradition' oxkastom as a symbolic construction, a contemporary human product rather than a passively inheritedlegacy (see Babadzan 1988; Keesing and Tonkinson 1982; Linnekin 1983).1 The impetus for this shift in perspective did not originate in Pacific anthropology, but can be traced to a more general dissatisfaction in the social sciences with positivist and objectivist approaches to culture and related concepts in Western scholarship. The more or less simultaneous appearance of these Pacific case studies, Anderson's (1983) Imagined Communities, and the Hobsbawm and Ranger (1983) volume Tlie Invention of Tradition demonstrates a striking cross-disciplinary convergence in a line of inquiry, albeit not as I elaborate below the emergence of a unified theory. This paper examines the theoretical notion of cultural construction in the light of the perceived political dilemmas associated with its application, in this case, to Pacific Islands societies. The essay's primary aims are twofold: to clarify and situate this concept theoretically, and to address the pragmatic aspects of cultural construction as a discursive mode in and about Pacific societies. I begin by emphasizing that the study of cultural invention in the Pacific has affinities with analogous projects not only in anthropology but in other disciplines. Placing this rubric in the broader context of current social-science theory and applications may explain why the exploration of cultural construction has become a theoretical imperative for many anthropologists. For all the perceived theoretical sophistication of this new approach, however, talking about the invention of culture in any specific social context is fraught with practical, political, and ethical problems. One wonders how Scottish nationalists, for example, may have reacted to Hugh Trevor-Roper's (1983) demolition of the vaunted 'Highland Tradition' as a set of 'fabrications'. A number of Pacific anthropologists have expressed concern about the way cultural construction 'plays' outside the academy. Particularly at issue is how this arguably rather abstruse academic argument may be represented in the politicized contexts of Pacific Island nations and colonies. The misgivings have recently been publicly articulated in reference to Allan Hanson' s (1989) article demonstrating that certain key tropes in Maori oral tradition were authored by European scholars.2 Hanson' s piece provoked angry reactions on the part of some Maori and Pakeha scholars in New Zealand (see Wilford 1990). The tenor of these responses points to a fundamental problem: that ' invention' is itself an inflammatory word, inescapably implying something fictitious, ' made up' and therefore not real (cf . Hanson 1991:450).

“trade” in aboriginal australia, and “trade” relationships with torres strait, new guinea and malaya

Abstract: A LTHOUGH the importance of barter in Australian aboriginal *^ culture has always been recognized, adequate records of its nature in various parts of the continent have not, unfortunately, been made. For those interested in cultural problems, such as origins and diffusions of traits, and for museums, it is important to know whether a specimen was or is made in the locality in which it was collected, or whether it was traded there from elsewhere ; for those studying the structure of Australian society it is important to know the form of all social mechanisms in local areas. For these reasons, those in contact with the aborigines in any part of Australia should record all data relating to barter and exchange. In view of the fact that few diagrams have been published of the routes upon which raw materials and finished objects travel from their place of origin, I have attempted in this study to correlate the data available in a diagrammatic form, with the object of ascertaining the extent of the interchange of articles and other traits between local groups and tribes, and, by linking up distant connections, to ascertain the relationships between trade routes and culture trends, and where possible, migration routes. Roth states that in northern Queensland " the great trading or bartering system is more or less continually going on throughout the various districts. Certain trade routes, laid down from time immemorial along their own or messmate's country, are followed by the members of a tribe or tribes, along which each knows that he is free to travel unmolested ; these routes, of great or less extent, are rigidly adhered to." His remarks are confirmed by reports from many other parts of Australia.

Tourism and anthropology in a post‐modern world

Abstract: Dans le cadre d'une recherche de terrain chez les Chambri (Papouasie-Nouvelle-Guinee), l'exemple d'une confrontation effective avec la penetration et les strategies touristiques est analysee dans le sens d'une discussion critique des assimilations faites entre les pratiques, discours touristiques et ethnographiques (cf. les critiques de l'anthropologie reflexive, « post-moderniste », etc...)