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Working Session: Forests of Oceania: Environmental Histories,
Present Concerns and Future Possibilities Despite the weather disruptions, seven of our ten participants were able to come to the meeting in Alexandria. We are grateful to those who were able to come, and are sorry that some had to cancel their trips. Ten papers were circulated prior to the session, and we had a productive day discussing these papers, which collectively dealt with a host of issues tied up with forests. Regionally the papers dealt with Papua New Guinea (Crater Mountain, East New Britain, Porgera, Purari Delta, Upper Bulolo River, Western Province), Mangareva and New Georgia in the Solomons. These wide-ranging papers dealt with various historical and ethnographic issues. It became apparent that while anthropology was well suited to engage with some of these themes. Value—both emic and etic—was of central concern in many of the papers. Not surprisingly value as connected to forests emerged as a troubled or emergent process through various internal and external pressures and scale-making activities by which resources and perceptions are made and unmade. Several of the papers—those by Michael Wood, Colin Filer and Jennifer Gabriel—dealt with the new valuation of forests as repositories of carbon, and what expectations locally and nationally these possibilities are creating. Papers by Edvard Hviding and Jerry Jacka showed how perspectives from ecology were needed alongside anthropological perspectives on kinship and land tenure to understand the entangled nature of forests with their denizens. It was apparent in all the papers that any discussion of forest extraction necessarily involves other extractive processes (i.e., mining, oil/gas, scientific knowledge production) and that these processes in turn help shape the ways that forests are used and perceived locally, regionally and globally. Papers by Paige West and Tuomas Tammisto reminded us of the complication of the State in the shaping of these processes. Work by Alex Mawyer, Joshua Bell and Jamon Halvaksz pointed to the ways history and memories are connected to forests, whether at the scale of landscape, portable objects, in persons or oral narratives, and that these histories appear and disappear over time. While Jennifer Gabriel’s paper gave an insightful look into the Malaysian conglomerate Rimbunan Hijau, it became apparent that we still lack detailed ethnographic understanding of the Asians who are engaged in regional forest extraction projects in Oceania. This absence has in large part to do with getting access to the new contexts of forest extraction in Oceania. Despite this lacuna, the papers collectively brought new perspectives on how Pacific Islanders are creatively engaging with the various processes at play in and around their forests, how the forests of Oceania are generative of relationships, and that they collectively remain an important focal point for research. At this stage we are revising the papers, and are looking towards publication. Depending on the availability of participants we are discussing the possibilities of meeting again in Honolulu. As organisers we would like to thank all the participants for their papers, their comments and engaged interactions. The session reminded us of why ASAO is such a fruitful venue, for which we are grateful. Joshua A. Bell, Natural History Museum, Smithsonian Institution, PO Box 37012, Washington, D.C. 20013-7012, U.S.A. <bellja@si.edu> Paige West, Associate Professor, Anthropology, Barnard College AND Columbia University, 3009 Broadway, New York, NY 10027, USA; <cw2031@columbia.edu> |
