[Anthropgrad] Seminar by Mark Harradine: ' Land and kastom in Port Vila'. Friday 6th March 2009.

[John White]

Anthropology Friday Seminar Series. Semester 1, 2009. Milgate Room, AD
Hope. Friday, 6th March, 3pm.

Seminar by Mark Harradine:

Land and kastom in Port Vila
 
The research will investigate the relationships between ni‑Vanuatu
practices of land occupation and use and the political directives
brought to this situation by state agents. It will look in particular at
tensions that exist between the land leasing system in Vanuatu and the
way in which one particular group of ni-Vanuatu, the Ifirans, negotiate
their claims to land in and around Port Vila, especially through
political, legal and administrative action.  The research will provide
an ethnographic account of ways in which the Ifirans use understandings
and forms of practice based in ‘kastom’, and also work through state and
commercial institutions to attempt to appropriate sovereignty in a
critical realm of social life in Vanuatu: rights to land.  It will seek
to examine the way in which the Ifiran claims and approaches affect
economic and social life, and their impacts on the formation of the
nation-state of Vanuatu.   The research will also provide an account of
the views of the state and development agents (notably the bi-lateral
donors, AusAID and NZAid) on these kinds of processes and their efforts
to change some of them. 

All welcome!





John White
PhD Candidate
A.D. Hope Building #14
The Australian National University
Canberra, ACT 0200
AUSTRALIA
Email: john.m.white at anu.edu.au
Ph: 0419882475