Contenu du sommaire : Du corps à l'image. La réinvention des performances culturelles en Océanie

The National Mask Festival in Papua New Guinea is an annual event organized by the national government to preserve and promote the cultures associated with masked figures representing ancestral spirits that are found in many parts of the country. For the last 15 years, it has been held in Rabaul/Kokopo, home of the Tolai people, who are known as one of the nation's most influential and affluent indigenous groups and well-known for their masked figures referred to generically as tubuan. This paper analyzes the Tolai performance of tubuan dances and rituals at the festival as a ritual, thereby examining its symbolic efficacy. It is shown that Tolai perform tubuan dances and rituals at the festival to demonstrate their superiority over other Papua New Guineans, and that they make their performance effective by using specific expressive strategies.

‪Embodying dual legacies (ancestral and colonial), communities throughout the Pacific Islands are configuring and re-configuring themselves, their cultures and, consequently, the world around them. This article examines the performative articulation of cultural heritage in Northern Vanuatu. Taking the case of the Leweton ‪“‪cultural village‪”‪ – performers of the Vanuatu Women's Water Music – this article explores the deliberative creation of diasporic identities. The process is complexified by the intangible and mobile elements of the water music as Leweton is a destination for tourists visiting the islands of Vanuatu, as well as an ensemble often ‪“‪on tour‪”‪ performing at international festivals and events.‪

‪In the North of Hoot ma Whaap (Kanaky New-Caledonia), especially in Arama, one may observe different attitudes towards phenomena seemingly related to the performance of cultural heritage. The analysis of the ethnography helps understand these different attitudes, showing the role of collective deliberations in deciding or refusing the performance of Kanak operating procedures which elaborate relations, some of which are instrumental in expressing local or regional sovereignty. In this perspective, some proposals for cultural performance can be refused as this would demean the ceremonial operating sequences involved by separating them from ceremonial contexts and thus ignore their efficacy in elaborating relations.‪

The 1975 Melanesian Arts festival, Melanesia 2000, is described as an historical reference point in the Kanak culture revival. Thus it is easy to overlook that people who nowadays welcome and support a spectacular parading of Kanak culture, were previously firmly opposed to what they called folklore, or even « a prostitution of indigenous culture ».‪ ‪ ‪ ‪Created by the Matignon Accords (1988), the Agency for the Development of Kanak Culture (‪ ‪adck‪ ‪) has then constantly promoted and encouraged new esthetic and contemporary expressions of Kanak cultural identity. Forty years after the festival took place, what is left of the spirit of Melanesia 2000? This text is drawn from a PhD thesis (2015) and underlines the principles and paradoxes inherent in what was the first public display of a unified Kanak culture, and the symbol for a « culturalization » of identities in New Caledonia. ‪

Spectacular “Pina'ina'i: écho de l'esprit et des corps” has taken place every year in Tahiti since 2011. During this event, choreographed by ‪ ‪Moana'ura Tehei'ura and organised by ‪ ‪association‪ ‪ Littérama'ohi,‪ ‪ writers and orators perform their texts, which are also interpreted by dancers and musicians; « danced-dancing words and the poetry of bodies come to life on the paepae a Hiro » (Tehei'ura 2012)‪ ‪. This article highlights the importance of the poetic, artistic, sociopolitical, and axiological resonances of Pina'ina'i. Nineteen contributors, most of whom are Polynesian – among them, the choreographer-director, composer, writer-readers, dancers, spectators, and researchers – analyse the singularity of this “new territory of expression” (Tokai Devatine). This new expression celebrates indigenous literature, stages “bodies and movement specific to Polynesia” ‪ ‪(Viri Taimana)‪ ‪, and creates a space where “different arts are transformed through their contact with one another” ‪ ‪(Tehei'ura)‪ ‪.‪

‪This paper explores a number of tensions around claims of rights over various aspects of cultural performance with a particular focus on the Cook Islands. We discuss the historical context of these tensions and trace the way in which certain anxieties and agendas have led to demands for, and the realisation of, new laws over cultural performances, most particularly the Copyright Act 2013 and the Traditional Knowledge Act 2013. We then discuss how such new regulatory frameworks have a potentially critical role to play in determining who has the rights to perform what, with effects that are likely to spill out from the confines of laws and court cases into popular discourses around claims over many manifestations of culture and creativity.‪

‪In July 2012 in Solomon Islands, 27 different Pacific nations came together for two weeks for the 11th Festival of Pacific Arts to express and articulate their traditions in their present forms for other Pacific Islanders (few non-Pacific Islanders attended the event). The festival was all about producing, reproducing and transforming Pacific identities, and much of this took an explicitly visual form, which the festival context fully supported. Cameras were everywhere and shooting was continuous both in photography and video, among the audience, the performers and the organizers as well. The photos were quickly transformed into YouTube, Facebook and offline video files, Flickr photo albums and countless other forms and formats shared among and between Pacific communities online and offline. The paper analyses this visual production in the cultural framework of Rennell and Bellona Islanders that the author has been working with. In particular, it highlights issues of cultural identity construction and aspects of cultural agency related with this visual production in the context of the overall modernization of the Solomon Islands society.‪

‪The John Frum ceremonies organized every 15th February since 1957 on Tanna have been considered an invented tradition by their first instigators. Later on, their successors claimed that this event symbolized the « salvage of their custom ». Initially launched as a ritualization process of foreign cultural expressions, with the purpose of legitimating new spiritual directions, this event has taken a more political and secularized dimension in the post-colonial period. Analyzing this historical transition offers an opportunity to situate it within a broader anthropological discussion about cultural continuity and the indigenization of modernity.‪

Several years after the debate on the invention of traditions in the Pacific, this article highlights some work that reproduces or deconstructs preconceived notions dealing with Hawaiian cultural performances. Through the case study of he‘e nalu (hawaiian surfing) in the 19th century, this analysis explains why anthropologists and historians have come to contradictory findings regarding its decline. E‪arly works dealing with diaries of missionaries and sailors have argued for the near extinction of surfing, whereas ‪a new school of thought tapping into Hawaiian sources and French literature has pinpointed its vivacity. To clarify controversy, this study examines American, British, French and Hawaiian primary sources and sheds light on the state of he‘e nalu and its cultural performances in the 19thcentury.

‪Several years after the debate on the invention of traditions in the Pacific, this article highlights some work that reproduces or deconstructs inaccurate statements dealing with Hawaiian cultural performances. Through the case study of ‪ ‪he‘e nalu ‪ ‪(Hawaiian surfing) in the 19th century, this analysis explains why anthropologists and historians have come to contradictory findings regarding its decline. Early works dealing with diaries of missionaries and sailors have argued for the near extinction of surfing, whereas a new school of thought tapping into Hawaiian sources and French literature has pinpointed its vivacity. To clarify controversy, this study examines American, British, French and Hawaiian primary sources and sheds light on the state of ‪ ‪he‘e nalu‪ ‪ and its cultural performances in the 19th‪ ‪ ‪ ‪century.‪

‪In the 1960s Jean Guiart bought fifteen « New Guinea » woodcarvings from Gene van Grecken in Sydney for the National Museum of the Arts of Africa and Oceania in Paris and published nine of them. Some authorities on New Guinea art considered them forgeries and two of these advised Guiart of this but he rejected their judgement. The issue was referred to only once in print very briefly in a Sotheby's sales catalogue. In 1987, van Grecken offered a further seven « New Guinea » woodcarvings for sale at auction in Sydney. They are similar to those bought by Guiart and are also inauthentic. This essay illustrates twelve of the carvings van Grecken sold to Guiart in the 1960s and the seven carvings he offered for sale in 1987 and argues for the view that they are not forgeries but part of a hoax perpetrated by an Australian artist, who remains anonymous, perhaps to see whether experts on New Guinea art can tell genuine woodcarvings from pastiches.‪

‪This article aims at drafting an analysis of the issues of official development aid in Vanuatu, Pacific Island Micro-State among the most assisted per capita in the world. The analysis of aid's effects has fed a large literature, often controversial within the academic, political and mediatic fields, in particular by granting an important weight to culture. The socio-anthropological approach being used here will firstly lead us to overcome the culturalist explanation to analyze aid effectiveness. The focus will be on the way donors' priorities influence those of beneficiaries by highlighting their « side effects ». This perspective will allow us to modelize the issue of aid appropriation in a region where knowledge regimes of development's experts turn out to be hardly accessible for local people.‪

In the Banks Islands, Vanuatu, some of the men's houses have disappeared. By contrast, some other buildings such as the kitchen houses are imbued with a primary social importance in daily and ceremonial life. How can we understand those architectural changes? From the end of the ‪ ‪19‪ ‪th‪ ‪ century men's houses to the current kitchen houses, I propose an analysis based on ethnographical fieldwork, missionary and colonial archives and the oral history of the island of Mere Lava in order to draw a chronicle of social and architectural change in this region of the Pacific.‪ houses to the current kitchen houses, I propose an analysis based on ethnographical fieldwork, missionary and colonial archives and the oral history of the island of Mere Lava in order to draw a chronicle of social and architectural change in this region of the Pacific.‪

‪The anthropology of Christianity in Melanesia has recently expanded and refined models of social change, promoting the concept of rupture as a principal analytical lens. This perspective begs greater nuance for circumstances in which Christian idioms and contents are used to justify rather than contravene or transform long standing non-Christian values and practices. Among the Baruya of Papua New Guinea, an indigenously secularized approach to Christianity supplants and informs Christian theological content without radically altering or modifying the traditional hierarchy of moral values. Instead, indigenous values regarding gender relations and social stratification orient the use of religious metaphors, which justify and sometimes reinforce traditional behaviors while casting them as modern. Analytically, Sahlins' concept of “the structure of conjuncture” allows to articulate models of ruptural Christianity with those of continuity within change.‪

‪The first natives from Tahiti and New Caledonia forming the “Pacific Battalion” reached Marseille in August 1916. Most of them were Protestants educated by the “Société des Missions évangéliques de Paris” (‪ ‪smep‪ ‪). How does the sudden storming of World War I in the Pacific disrupted the native representations of the European countries involved in the conflict? How does the rhetoric of the ‪ ‪smep‪ ‪ changed, from a pietistic classical discourse about Christian love to another one about Just War? How was this discourse received? This paper aims to rise these questions using the ‪ ‪smep‪ ‪ archives and the letters of the missionaries. After an introduction setting the Protestantism in the context of the global French society prior the war the first part explores the major topics in the missionary writings, and the Pacific islanders' incomprehension of the conflict transforming missionaries into interprets of a new situation. The second part deals with the religious rhetoric used by the missionaries: the “just War theory” applied to the World War I, God as father and Nation as mother, the theology of debt, retribution and sacrifice, the war as an occasion of a worldwide communion. The third part of the paper analyses this missionary patriotism characterised by a wide self-satisfaction. It mentions censured passages and shows eventually how few missionaries expressed a divergent thinking.‪

‪Concessions, called ‘backfill load', that are authorized by the authorities allow communities and individuals to use backfilled maritime areas for the public interest, or for the interests of riparian owners of the lagoon in order to enlarge their land. These concessions are issued according to regulations that have evolved in recent decades. There are currently no more concessions permitted except under special exemptions. Wild embankments that are therefore illegal in view of the law may nevertheless be regularized. Despite progress towards better management of the coastal privatization problem, there is clear evidence demonstrating a lack of political will to respect the inalienability of the maritime domain. The temporary concessions that are effectively final have never ensured the right of passage - three meters large - to the beach. Between electioneering schedules and public interest, political powers have lacked the courage to enforce these laws in spite of consequences of these embankments.‪