Papers by Thorgeir Kolshus
Le Vanuatu dans tous ses Etats, 2024
Vanuatu’s staggering cultural and linguistic diversity are emblematic for the nation and hold a s... more Vanuatu’s staggering cultural and linguistic diversity are emblematic for the nation and hold a strong rhetorical position in creating a national identity as well being sources of pride when communicating with tourists and other foreign visitors. One consequence of cultural diversity is the existence of many different forms of leadership and notions of authority. In everyday life, this poses few challenges. However, where local, provincial or national levels intersect, conflicts of interests will frequently take the shape of conflicts of authority. Yet another layer of complexity is added by traditional property rights to knowledge, which usually is held individually, and local manifestations of party politics, which allows the pursuit of individual ambition detached from kinship obligations. In this chapter, I show how these domains of influence overlap on the island of Mota in the Banks Islands, where several legitimate but conflicting concerns come to the fore when faced with a kastom documentation film project, causing a chain of events that no one could have foreseen or, eventually, are able to contain. This extended case shows one of the predicaments of protecting and maintaining kastom: how to reconcile contemporary concerns for the devaluation of restricted knowledge with the long-term goal of preserving traditional practices.
Keywords: Traditional authority; fieldwork conflicts; the politics of knowledge; Banks Islands
Qui décide ? La balance entre la conservation de kastom et l’autorité contesté dans le nord du Vanuatu
La diversité culturelle et linguistique surprenante de Vanuatu est emblématique pour la nation, et occupe une position rhétorique forte dans la création d'une identité nationale et aussi une source de fierté de la communication vers les touristes et les autres visiteurs étrangers. L'une des conséquences de la diversité culturelle est l'existence de nombreuses formes différentes de pouvoir et de notion d'autorité. Dans la vie quotidienne, cela pose peu de problèmes. Pourtant, là où les niveaux local, provincial ou national se croisent, les conflits d'intérêts prendront souvent la forme de conflits d'autorité. Encore une autre couche de complexité est ajoutée par les droits de propriété traditionnels sur les connaissances, qui sont généralement détenus individuellement, et les manifestations locales de la politique partisane, qui permettent la poursuite de l'ambition individuelle détachée des obligations de parenté. Dans ce chapitre, je dispute comment ces domaines d'influence se chevauchent sur l'île de Mota dans les îles Banks, où plusieurs préoccupations légitimes mais contradictoires se font jour face à un projet de film de documentation de kastom, provoquant une chaîne d'événements que personne n’aurait pu prévoir ou, éventuellement, sont capables de contenir. Ce cas étendu montre l'une des difficultés de la protection et du conservation de la kastom : comment concilier les préoccupations contemporaines de dévaluation des connaissances restreintes avec l'objectif à longue durée des pratiques traditionnelles.
Mots clés : Autorité traditionnel ; conflits de travail sur le terrain ; les politiques du savoir ; L’Iles Banks.
Keywords: Traditional authority; fieldwork conflicts; the politics of knowledge; Banks Islands
Qui décide ? La balance entre la conservation de kastom et l’autorité contesté dans le nord du Vanuatu
La diversité culturelle et linguistique surprenante de Vanuatu est emblématique pour la nation, et occupe une position rhétorique forte dans la création d'une identité nationale et aussi une source de fierté de la communication vers les touristes et les autres visiteurs étrangers. L'une des conséquences de la diversité culturelle est l'existence de nombreuses formes différentes de pouvoir et de notion d'autorité. Dans la vie quotidienne, cela pose peu de problèmes. Pourtant, là où les niveaux local, provincial ou national se croisent, les conflits d'intérêts prendront souvent la forme de conflits d'autorité. Encore une autre couche de complexité est ajoutée par les droits de propriété traditionnels sur les connaissances, qui sont généralement détenus individuellement, et les manifestations locales de la politique partisane, qui permettent la poursuite de l'ambition individuelle détachée des obligations de parenté. Dans ce chapitre, je dispute comment ces domaines d'influence se chevauchent sur l'île de Mota dans les îles Banks, où plusieurs préoccupations légitimes mais contradictoires se font jour face à un projet de film de documentation de kastom, provoquant une chaîne d'événements que personne n’aurait pu prévoir ou, éventuellement, sont capables de contenir. Ce cas étendu montre l'une des difficultés de la protection et du conservation de la kastom : comment concilier les préoccupations contemporaines de dévaluation des connaissances restreintes avec l'objectif à longue durée des pratiques traditionnelles.
Mots clés : Autorité traditionnel ; conflits de travail sur le terrain ; les politiques du savoir ; L’Iles Banks.
Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society, 2023
After many years of slumber, a string of disturbing political developments and setbacks in many p... more After many years of slumber, a string of disturbing political developments and setbacks in many parts of the world have convinced the anthropological community to recommit to its public role. As one of a mere handful of nations where anthropology has had a longstanding presence in public debates, Norway serves as an example for others to follow. In this essay, I use my experiences from years of varied media engagements to make the case for a public anthropology that is not merely a one-way enlightenment project but a tool for reflexivity and disciplinary critique. The didactic reformulation required when reaching out to new audiences can defamiliarise the things we know well and help us see things anew. In addition, the feedback, and occasionally outright resistance, often harvested by such outreach can provide a fresh take on established patterns of thinking and identify thematic and analytic blind spots. In Norway, anthropologists have gradually become collectively branded as belonging to the political left, which has blunted the potential impact of an anthropological critique. Showing that this branding is not entirely without substance, I argue that, by using media engagements as a two-way source of reflexivity, public anthropology can be a vital part of the discipline's epistemological agility.
Frihetsbalansen (The balance of freedom)
Rådet for psykisk helse, 2022
Is there such a thing as too much freedom? Can the seemingly endless possibilities to shape our i... more Is there such a thing as too much freedom? Can the seemingly endless possibilities to shape our individual lives also be experienced as burdensome and overwhelming? Does the expectation that we will find our "unique selves" and create "our own future" also mean that we give up some of the security that comes from following in the footsteps of others? In this essay, we use experiences from ethnographic fieldwork among people on two islands in the Pacific Ocean and in a Norwegian rural community to address the balancing between being free enough and safe enough.
Scandinavian Journal of Intercultural Theory and Practice, 2019
Taking its cue from Marx’ and Weber’s grand theorizing, a key narrative in Western modernity has ... more Taking its cue from Marx’ and Weber’s grand theorizing, a key narrative in Western modernity has been the inevitable dissolution of pre-modern identities. This thesis has informed both policy making and notions of global agency, and in effect caused a particular worldview in which everyone will become more or less the same –what I refer to as the Star Trek-vision of globalized culture and values. In this article, I borrow thelinguisticconcept of ‘esoterogeny’, the creation of the obscure, to address whether difference, far from being coincidental, servesa more fundamental experiential purpose and consequently isactively maintained. The empirical point of departure are church fissions and denominational dynamics in the Pacific island state of Vanuatu. I argue that in an age characterized by identity politics, in which recognition and attention are scarce resources, all keen observers of social systems should expect the outcome of ever more global interaction to lead to an increase in articulations of social and cultural difference.
Still naughty after all these years?
Cultural Anthropology, 2018
https://culanth.org/fieldsights/1528-still-naughty-after-all-these-years
Norsk Antropologisk Tidsskrift, 2018
SUMMARY From fertile soil to barren ground: The fate of cultural relativism in Norwegian public d... more SUMMARY From fertile soil to barren ground: The fate of cultural relativism in Norwegian public discourse. To nostalgia-prone anthropologists, the years between the falls of the Berlin Wall and the Twin Towers appear as the discipline's golden age as far as public influence is concerned. Through Arne Martin Klausen's and Fredrik Barth's desire and skill for public engagements, Norway had been exposed to the systematic playfulness of anthropology's comparative and cultural relativistic methodology. In the nineties, this turned out into full blossom, in a unique interaction between the discipline's lightness in spirit and the general Zeitgeist. Other worlds were obviously possible – for a new world had just revealed itself. With 9/11 entered a new form of solemnity, and people gradually turned their back on anthropology's lightheartedness. Through a combination of database searches, media examples and my own professional experience with public engagements, I show how the narrative of cultural relativism has moved from being a formative virtue to becoming synonymous with spinelessness, where the distinction between cultural relativism and moral relativism is obscured. I ask the question of whether we also have contributed to weakening the impact of culture relativism through what I call moralizing relativism, in combination with an uncritical import of cultural-specific identity theories, mainly of American origin. And what can we do to restore the critical potential of anthropology, at a time when the value of understanding is under challenge, yet remain more required than ever before?
In recent decades, the term 'mobility' has emerged as a defining paradigm within the humanities. ... more In recent decades, the term 'mobility' has emerged as a defining paradigm within the humanities. For scholars engaged in the multidisciplinary topics and perspectives now often embraced by the term Pacific Studies it has been a much more longstanding and persistent concern. Even so, specific questions regarding 'mobilities of return'-that is, the movement of people 'back' to places that are designated, however ambiguously or ambivalently, as 'home'-have tended to take a back seat within more recent discussions of mobility, transnationalism and migration. Situating return mobility as a starting point for social inquiry gives rise to important questions regarding the broader context and experience of human mobility, community and identity. This represents an important contribution to emerging perspectives that seek to move beyond binary optics of domestic or translocal versus international migration, local versus foreign identity, and indeed of stasis versus mobility itself. This introductory chapter foregrounds the ways in which the volume as a whole demonstrates the extent to which the prospect and practice of returning home, or of navigating returns between multiple homes, is a central rather than peripheral component of contemporary Pacific Islander mobilities and identities.
Get your book out!" Supervisors and committee members have long given this advice to their PhD ca... more Get your book out!" Supervisors and committee members have long given this advice to their PhD candidates. Recently, it seems, if a thesis cannot be made publishable without significant revisions and adjustment of genre and audience, it is seen as flawed in its own right. Like all good advice, this is given with the candidates' best interest in mind by senior scholars who have witnessed the making of many careers-and the breaking of even more.
A number of anthropology's most emblematic innovations have caught on elsewhere. Yet anthropologi... more A number of anthropology's most emblematic innovations have caught on elsewhere. Yet anthropologists seem almost distressed by the success of concepts like " culture " and " ethnicity " and too readily dispose of them in the name of scholarly fastidiousness. Lately, " ethnographic method " has gained multidisciplinary attention. Instead of providing guidance to the limits of ethnography, we engage in a search for the catchall definition, risking abandoning the vague-but-useful for the optimal-but-unattainable. In this article, I draw on my experience as a public anthropologist to show how ethnography, in the scholarly highly unsatisfactory meaning of " good stories, " is crucial to our public engagements, which again triggers a curiosity to anthropology that the future of our discipline depends on. The Hau debate on ethnography was a thrill to attend. Finally, after three decades during which stifling self-scrutiny has been mistaken for a disciplinary virtue, we rekindle our forerunners' commitment to making a difference beyond our own intellectual shores. When this panel of distinguished anthropologists, of different backgrounds and with highly different research interests and epistemological bases, all adamantly unite behind our duty to engage a postfact age in dire need of nuances, this heralds a crucial change in orientation. In retrospect, the article that triggered the debate seems mistitled— " That's enough about introspection! " would be more fitting—and I believe many us will take Tim Ingold's primal scream for a rallying call, being just as " sick and tired of equivocation, of scholarly obscu-rantism, and of the conceit that turns the project of anthropology into the study of its own ways of working " (2014: 383). We have taken all that we need from the hodgepodge of critiques and turns, and time has come for that most social of the social sciences to recommit to its Enlightenment roots. This is the point where
The last decades have seen rising concerns regarding anthropology's impact and applicability beyo... more The last decades have seen rising concerns regarding anthropology's impact and applicability beyond our own ranks. The days when anthropological literature was so widely read and accessibly written that Aldous Huxley could take for granted that the readers of Brave New World would be familiar with the Trobriand Islanders' conceptions of procreation may never return. But have we also lost our influence on neighboring disciplines within the social sciences and humanities, visible in the widespread reception of, among others, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Mary Douglas, Clifford Geertz, and Victor Turner? The present volume, edited by
Chapter 6 (pp. 155-182) in Matt Tomlinson and Ty Tengan (eds) New Mana: Transformations of a clas... more Chapter 6 (pp. 155-182) in Matt Tomlinson and Ty Tengan (eds) New Mana: Transformations of a classic concept in Pacific languages and cultures. Canberra: Australian National University Press 2016
Much has been said about mana since Robert Henry Codrington"s 1891 exegesis based on ethnography ... more Much has been said about mana since Robert Henry Codrington"s 1891 exegesis based on ethnography from the Banks Islands in northern Vanuatu. In Polynesia contexts, mana has been regarded as a cultural common denominator, with comparatively minor empirical differences within the vast Polynesian cultural area. In Melanesian scholarship, however, consistent with the general emphasis on cultural diversity within the region, it is still a matter of considerable debate whether there is anything to gain from a common approach to mana.
Da jeg etter noen års fravaer vendte tilbake til SAI i 2011, var noe av det første som slo meg at... more Da jeg etter noen års fravaer vendte tilbake til SAI i 2011, var noe av det første som slo meg at enkelte hadde begynt å snakke så rart. Seminarpresentasjoner kunne veksle fra det komplett ugjennomtrengelige til det tilsynelatende like komplett trivielle naermest fra den ene setningen til den andre, ikledd en sjargong som for egalitaere skandinaviske ører lød spekket med plussord: 'Symmetri', 'flate ontologier', 'følgesvennarter', 'becomings, not beings', 'livets antropologi', 'dedication to messiness', etc, etc. Laks, kamskjell og matsutakesopp bar ikke lenger kun i seg kimen til et spennende måltid, men til en vidunderlig ny verden av innsikter som hadde gått norsk antropologi hus forbi. Denne verdenen bød også merkelapper for oss som mente at sosialantropologien først og fremst dreier seg om menneskers forhold til verden og til hverandre. Våre tanker var visstnok hjemsøkt av 'human exceptionalism', den sementerte, og endog «narraktige» (Haraway 2008: 244, i Kirksey et al. 2010: 546), vrangforestilling at mennesket var noe mer enn kun én art blant mange. Bemyndiget med denne verdensanskuelsen fant en noe overspent doktorkandidat å kunne avlevere følgende kraftsalve mot oss asymmetriske forskere: Vi var «antroposentriske narsissister». Intet mindre. Slikt kan enten provosere eller fascinere. Jeg innrømmer at jeg ble litt av begge. Så derfor var det med saerskilt forventning jeg plukket NATs temanummer om ANT opp fra postkassen. Endelig skulle jeg få litt mer klarhet i hva det var jeg hadde gått glipp av.