[Anthropgrad] Friday Seminars (23 May 08)

[sinwen.lau at anu.edu.au]

Anthropology Student Seminar Series, Semester 1, 2008
Milgate Room, AD Hope
23 May 2008, 3 pm

'Cultural Difference and Affinity: Conceptualising Cultural 
Relationality in Oceania' by Dr Elfriede Hermann

This presentation looks at indigenous practices of forming cultural 
configurations and reflects upon anthropological perceptions of cultural 
specifics. The phenomenon of cultural specifics has, over the last 
twenty-five years been conceptualised in terms of 'cultural difference'. 
Since then there has been a growing tendency to over-emphasise cultural 
difference. In the face of this continuing enthusiasm for cultural 
difference, I would like to caution that it does not necessarily add to 
the sum of anthropological knowledge for the focus of scholarship to be 
directed solely at cultural difference, and for social groups to be seen 
as bearers of such. In this talk, I adopt an integrative perspective so 
as to conceptualise cultural difference in relation to cultural 
affinity, and vice versa. I present two case studies from Oceania to 
explore indigenous practices of shaping and conceptualising cultural 
specifics in terms of affinities. My first case study concerns the 
forming of socio-religious practices in Papua New Guinea, particularly 
via the cultural transfer of Christian practices of confession. My 
second covers transformations of consumption among the Banabans, a 
community originally from the central Pacific but living now in Fiji. 
Here, I focus on cultural exchanges between Banabans and autochthonous 
Fijians on neighbouring islands. Based on these case studies, I argue 
that anthropological research might benefit from exploring ways of 
theorising cultural difference that bring it into correlation with 
cultural affinity.

Dr. Elfriede Hermann is currently a visiting fellow at the Department of 
Anthropology, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at The 
Australian National University. She is teaching at the Institute of 
Cultural and Social Anthropology at the University of Goettingen, 
Germany, and is also a research fellow at the Honolulu Academy of Arts, 
Honolulu, Hawai'i.
Correspondence to: elfriede.hermann at anu.edu.au , 
Elfriede.Hermann at phil.uni-goettingen.de