Hau'ofa's Hope Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania 2009 Distinguished Lecture

Abstract

I am grateful for the invitation to address the Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania (ASAO) as its Distinguished Lecturerespecially since my relation to Pacific scholarship has always been rather unprofessional, or at least spotty. I like to think of myself as an amateurin a sense that comes through best in the French amateur, one who loves. Someone who cultivates a study or art from taste or attraction rather than professionally. (I pass over another meaning, more prominent in the English language dictionaries: 'a person who does something more or less unskillfully.') So I address you as a non-specialist, amateur of the Pacifica fellow-traveler perhaps, in that vast space. But while I may not have much new to say, for this audience, about Island Pacific societies or histories, I may be able to suggest ways that the region and some of its distinctive problems and theorists have been generative for thinking about broad issues: the nature and diversity of indigeneity today, scale-making in various globalizing socio-cultural processes, the inventive dynamism of tradition, and the question of what might be called differential historicities. By that I mean ways of telling large scale stories about where wealways a contested pronounhave come from and are going, separately and together. Preparing this talk has made me realize how much of what I find most useful for thinking through our current utopic/dystopic moment has come from the Pacificfrom a uniquely rich scholarly fusion of ethnography with history, and from inspirational scholars, writers, activists and studentssome, but not all of whom, I'll be able to mention tonight. So I offer this address in a spirit of gratitude. But also, I confess, with a certain irritation. When I was contacted about doing the lecture, I thought: 'Ah ASAO. An exotic locale. Preferably in Hawaii, or at least Southern Californiasomewhere near a beach with warm water.' Well, I hope foggy Santa Cruz seems exotic enough to you at least. Lacking my usual excusethat a trip away from home would be too disruptive in the midst of a hectic academic termI yielded to my election. But I said that I couldn't, for lack of time, come up with something really appropriate to the Pacific, so I would need to speak from my current research on indigenous heritage politics in Alaska. No doubt the general issues would resonate.