The Ethnographic Experiment: A.M. Hocart and W.H.R. Rivers in Island Melanesia, 1908

Published by Berghahn Books 2014

The Ethnographic Experiment

A.M. Hocart and W.H.R. Rivers in Island Melanesia, 1908

Edited by: Edvard Hviding and Cato Berg

Volume 1 in the series Pacific Perspectives: Studies of the European Society for Oceanists

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781782383437

Overview
Contents

About this book

In 1908, Arthur Maurice Hocart and William Halse Rivers Rivers conducted fieldwork in the Solomon Islands and elsewhere in Island Melanesia that served as the turning point in the development of modern anthropology. The work of these two anthropological pioneers on the small island of Simbo brought about the development of participant observation as a methodological hallmark of social anthropology. This would have implications for Rivers’ later work in psychiatry and psychology, and Hocart’s work as a comparativist, for which both would largely be remembered despite the novelty of that independent fieldwork on remote Pacific islands in the early years of the 20th Century. Contributors to this volume—who have all carried out fieldwork in those Melanesian locations where Hocart and Rivers worked—give a critical examination of the research that took place in 1908, situating those efforts in the broadest possible contexts of colonial history, imperialism, the history of ideas and scholarly practice within and beyond anthropology.

Author / Editor information

Edvard Hviding is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen, Director of the Bergen Pacific Studies Research Group, and Coordinator of the EU-funded European Consortium for Pacific Studies. Among his publications are Guardians of Marovo Lagoon (1996), Islands of Rainforest (with T. Bayliss-Smith, 2000), Reef and Rainforest: An Environmental Encyclopedia of Marovo Lagoon (2005) and Made in Oceania (co-edited with K.M. Rio, 2011). In 2010, Hviding was awarded the Solomon Islands Medal for his development of vernacular education programmes in the Marovo language.

Cato Berg is an Associate Senior Scholar of the Bergen Pacific Studies Research Group. He has a PhD from the University of Bergen, where he has also held positions as a Postdoctoral Fellow and a Lecturer in anthropology. His research experience from Solomon Islands includes fieldwork both in Honiara and on the island of Vella Lavella. He has recently studied how localized forms of hierarchy, kinship, and land tenure are transformed in engagements with a Westminster-based legal system inherited from the nation’s colonial past.

Edvard Hviding is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen, Director of the Bergen Pacific Studies Research Group, and Coordinator of the EU-funded European Consortium for Pacific Studies. Among his publications are Guardians of Marovo Lagoon (1996), Islands of Rainforest (with T. Bayliss-Smith, 2000), Reef and Rainforest: An Environmental Encyclopedia of Marovo Lagoon (2005) and Made in Oceania (co-edited with K.M. Rio, 2011). In 2010, Hviding was awarded the Solomon Islands Medal for his development of vernacular education programmes in the Marovo language.

Reviews

“[With this] very cohesive set of essays, Hviding and Berg h ave done an excellent job lifting an important expedition out of the archival oblivion where it reposed for the better part of a century. This is an appropriate volume to introduce the new Pacific Perspectives series. As such, this work appeals to readers interested in the histories of anthropology and Pacific worlds.” · Oceania

“Mere scholars and no novelists here, volume contributors nonetheless have good biographical stories to tell, good ethnographic tales to recall.” · Anthropological Forum

“Edvard Hviding and Cato Berg's new edited collection on the neglected Melanesian expedition on 1908 is timely and important.” · Anthropology Review Database

“It has been quite a while since I encountered a collection of essays that was as well coordinated, topically consistent, and thematically linked as this one. The end result is an intellectually rigorous examination of an overlooked but nonetheless extremely important event in the history of anthropology… The volume, taken as a whole, has a refreshingly critical and reflective quality about it.” · David Hanlon, University of Hawai`i at Mānoa

“This compelling volume invites readers to imagine what the discipline might have been like if this expedition had been taken as a foundational moment in the discipline’s history. It is an alternative to Malinowskian myth of the heroic individual fieldworker isolated on a beach watching the boat go away.” · Debra McDougall, University of Western Australia

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Figures and Tables Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Preface Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Acknowledgements Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Introduction: The Ethnographic Experiment in Island Melanesia Edvard Hviding and Cato Berg Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1 Acknowledging Ancestors: The Vexations of Representation Christine Dureau Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	44
2 Across the New Georgia Group A.M. Hocart’s Fieldwork as Inter-island Practice Edvard Hviding Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	71
3 The Genealogical Method: Vella Lavella Reconsidered Cato Berg Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	108
4 Rivers and the Study of Kinship on Ambrym: Mother Right and Father Right Revisited Knut M. Rio and Annelin Eriksen Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	132
5 A House upon Pacific Sand: W.H.R. Rivers and His 1908 Ethnographic Survey Work Thorgeir S. Kolshus Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	155
6 Colonialism as Shell Shock: W.H.R. Rivers’s Explanations for Depopulation in Melanesia Tim Bayliss-Smith Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	179
7 A Vanishing People or a Vanishing Discourse? W.H.R. Rivers’s ‘Psychological Factor’ and Depopulation in the Solomon Islands and the New Hebrides Judith A. Bennett Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	214
8 Objects and Photographs from the Percy Sladen Trust Expedition Tim Thomas Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	252
Appendix 1 Unpublished Reports by W.H.R. Rivers to the Trustees of the Percy Sladen Memorial Trust Fund Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	283
Appendix 2 Materials in Archives from the 1908 Percy Sladen Trust Expedition Cato Berg Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	291
Appendix 3 Planning the Expedition: Letters Written Before the Fieldwork Began Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	295
Notes on Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	303
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	307

Language: English
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 336
Keywords: Anthropology (General); Colonial History

eBook

Published: June 1, 2014
ISBN: 9781782383437