A Brief History of the
ASSOCIATION FOR SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY IN OCEANIA (ASAO)

A series of symposia organized in the late 1960s at University of California–Santa Cruz to address topics of interest to scholars interested in the Pacific Islands eventually led to the formation of the Association for Social Anthropology in Eastern Oceania (ASAEO), which subsequently became the Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania (ASAO). ASAO has held annual meetings since 1972 in various locations to accommodate its international membership, and in 1992 it obtained US federal tax-exempt status as a 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation.

Over time, a distinctive ASAO meeting format evolved, designed to promote scholarly collaboration and cooperative publication by facilitating review and critique of contributions in a focused, topical session that often meets two or three years in a row. The first meeting on a given topic is often an "informal session" to share ideas and identify a common ground of interest and data to justify organizing the next stage. Communication among participants prior to the annual meeting sometimes allows groups to develop ideas to a point that they convene for the first time as a "working session." For a working session, participants prepare contributions that are circulated ahead of time and summarized (not read) during the session. A "symposium" usually develops from sessions that have met at least once before. Symposium participants have rewritten their papers within a comparative framework that has emerged from group discussion and critique, and papers again are circulated before the meeting for further critique and refinement. Many symposia proceed to publication, in the ASAO Book Series or in other forums including special issues of journals as well as stand-alone volumes. The association also has a Special Publication Series. The ASAO Newsletter  is typically published three times a year. ASAO members and other interested persons also communicate via ASAONet, an electronic bulletin board (email listserv) hosted by the University of Illinois at Chicago since 1995. The ASAO website was first established in 1996.

ASAO's Pacific Islands Scholars Award (PISA) supports attendance and participation of Pacific Islands scholars at ASAO meetings through travel awards and waivers of some fees. The association also encourages members to return information to the island communities from which it originated, in forms appropriate to and usable at the village level, through a program called Grant to Return Indigenous Knowledge to Pacific Islands Communities (GRIKPIC). An elected board guides the association, and several officers manage operations. Individuals who have served as board members or officers, or have contributed to an ASAO publication, are eligible for ASAO Fellow status on payment of annual dues. Distinguished scholars in the field may be elected as ASAO Honorary Fellows, a permanent status; the number of living Honorary Fellows at no time exceeds twenty-five.

For more detailed accounts of particular aspects of the association's history, please see ASAO Histories below.

LIST OF ASAO HISTORIES

The papers in this collection were developed through a series of informal and working sessions held at ASAO annual meetings from 2015 to 2018. The authors are former or current ASAO officers or members of the ASAO Board of Directors. To research and recount the histories of various aspects of the organization, they drew on ASAO Newsletters and other ASAO archival sources, interviews with founding or other long-time association members, and their own experiences. The papers were subsequently revised and edited, and a preface has been added to locate this effort in ASAO’s ongoing commitment to document its history. At least one additional paper is in preparation, and more may be added at a later date.

1. Preface: Writing ASAO Histories: Preface, by Jan Rensel
2. A History of ASAO Sessions: Formats and Topics, by Alexander Mawyer and Alan Howard
3. The ASAO Monograph and Book Series, by Margaret Rodman, Andrew Strathern, Pamela J. Stewart-Strathern, Michèle Dominy, Jeannette Mageo, and Rupert Stasch
4. ASAO Special Publications and Distinguished Lectures, by Lamont Lindstrom
5. Place Matters: A History of ASAO Meeting Sites, by Michael A. Rynkiewich
6. Inclusiveness and ASAO Membership Categories, by Juliana Flinn
7. Jane Goodale and the "Bryn Mawr Mafia": The Origins and Consequences of Including Students in ASAO, by Laura Zimmer-Tamakoshi
8. The Origins and Development of the Pacific Islands Scholars Fund, by Jan Rensel
9. ASAEO + NEWS = ASAO, by Richard Scaglion
10. Virtually Initiated: A Personal Account of ASAONET’s Impact on the Life of a Young Anthropologist, by Thorgeir Kolshus
11. The ASAO Website: A Brief History, 1997–2015, by Alan Howard

ASAO ARCHIVES

The physical archives of the Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania are housed in the Pacific Collection of Hamilton Library, University of Hawai'i at Manoa; the call number is MANUSCRIPT P00028. 

The archives date back to the 1960s and largely consist of official association records, such as annual meeting agenda, minutes, schedules, and programs; officers' annual reports; and various cumulative reports. 

Also included are correspondence files, which are considered "closed" files and require ASAO Board approval for access. Please contact the ASAO Archivist for more information. Please allow at least two weeks for the approval process. 

In addition, please see the ASAO section of eVols, one of the University of Hawai‘i's open-access, digital institutional repositories, for additional historical and archival materials, including the ASAO Histories papers.