“Guardians” of Signatures? Future Directions in Pacific History from a Pacific Early Career Academic in Aotearoa

As a Pacific early career academic sitting between history and Pacific studies, I see unresolved tension concerning the lack of prioritisation of Pacific voices in Pacific history. In this article I explore how Pacific voices are included in the writing and teaching of Pacific history to establish that this is a continuing and unresolved issue. To do this, I survey articles in the Journal of Pacific History between 2015 and 2020 to trace the inclusion and prevalence of Pacific voices through authorship and prioritisation of historical evidence, alongside analysis of the teaching of Pacific history in universities in Aotearoa.

Oceanic imaginaries in film and development: lenses of collaboration

<p>Cultural expression and culture have informed the formulation of development outcomes and processes, with varying success. Historically, this has occurred incidentally to mainstream development priorities such as primary education and health, and food security. In recent decades have, however, international institutions have come to recognise the importance of culture to development both as an area of development as well as something which informs development planning and processes. Often, the cultural development agenda, where driven by institutions, has been largely for instrumental purposes. Thus far, there has been an emphasis in research on the relative absence of culture from development definitions and processes. This thesis investigates the ways that film and film-making processes are contributing to a range of social and cultural outcomes in Oceania, and how these processes could be envisaged as contributing to a broader cultural development agenda. Using qualitative methods, this research examines how the regional imaginary is being practiced in different ways by film communities by drawing on several film projects across the region. This is couched in a discussion which examines the role of indigenous film as part of the global decolonisation agenda. It also highlights the importance of film as a means of decolonising identities and social practice. This research reveals the diverse motivations for collaborative kinships in film. These in turn demonstrate how understandings of relationships between individuals and communities can be enable horizontal development. This demonstrates the tension between dominant understandings of development and regionalism. This research also highlights how film kinships, informed by regional connections, are collaborating to grow film-making in Oceania. Using an intersectional framework drawing on scholarship from post-development theory and Pacific Studies, this research seeks to broaden the way that development is framed and practiced. While it is critical of some mainstream development tendencies – in policy formulation and practice – this research seeks to highlight how diverse and numerousapproaches are important. This research draws together an analysis of collaboration in film practice and endeavours to address inequalities in voice and representation of Oceanian peoples in film. It shows the contribution that film can make to expansive understandings of development in Oceania.</p>

"[They] danced, and, then, … it was our turn to dance": Performative cultural diplomacy between Tuvalu and Taiwan

<p>Taiwan (the Republic of China, ROC) contains vibrant communities of Pacific diplomats and students from Taiwan’s allies—as of August 2019, this included Tuvalu, Nauru, Solomon Islands, the Marshall Islands, Kiribati, and Palau—and sometimes non-allies like Papua New Guinea. These communities are overlooked in both Pacific Studies and International Relations (IR) research. While working as an interpreter for the Tuvalu Embassy in Taiwan, I interacted with Pacific and Taiwanese diplomatic communities and witnessed how the Tuvalu and Taiwan governments attempted to communicate culture through performative/dance projects (i.e., performative cultural diplomacy). These performative engagements challenge IR analysis of Asia in the Pacific, which sees Pacific-Taiwan diplomacy as primarily determined by competition between Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Instead, these engagements demonstrate how participants in Tuvalu-Taiwan performative cultural diplomacy, the majority of whom are not diplomats, carry with them multiple ideas and identities; consider their actions based on diverse contexts; and assign varying levels of importance to diplomacy, Tuvalu, and Taiwan. Consequently, in this thesis, I adopt a Pacific Studies research framework that emphasizes indigenous epistemologies, comparativity, interdisciplinarity, and a critical empowerment rationale to examine three topics: (1) Tuvaluan, Pacific, and Taiwanese conceptions of diplomacy; (2) the Tuvalu-Taiwan diplomatic relationship and its underlying assumptions; and (3) how Tuvalu-Taiwan performative cultural diplomacy both reflects and complicates diplomatic conceptions and assumptions. After introducing my research questions and structure in Chapter 1, in Chapter 2, I outline conceptions of diplomacy explicated by Pacific diplomats in Taiwan; Tuvaluan diplomats, officials, and traditional leaders in Tuvalu and Taiwan; and Taiwanese diplomats/officials in the same locations. I demonstrate how Tuvaluan/Pacific ideas of diplomacy often diverge from those held by Taiwanese diplomats/officials while also highlighting disparities among Tuvaluan and other Pacific views. In Chapter 3, I sketch discursive histories of Tuvalu-Taiwan diplomacy. I map how Tuvalu and Taiwan have characterized each other since establishing relations and trace the complex routes that structure how they currently imagine their diplomatic partner. Chapter 3 also shows how discursive histories both dovetail with and challenge diplomatic conceptions outlined in Chapter 2. Subsequently, in Chapters 4 to 6, I bring three Tuvalu-Taiwan performative cultural diplomacy projects into conversation with conceptual and discursive trends from Chapters 2 and 3. Here, I emphasize the voices of diplomats, officials, planners, performers, and audience members who engage with projects and underscore tensions that arise among participants and between participants and diplomats, officials, and audience members from their diplomatic partner. I also consider diplomatic conceptions, discourses, and assumptions discussed earlier in the thesis from the perspectives of project participants and observers to show how performative cultural diplomacy influences and illuminates diplomatic relationships. In the Conclusion, I explore the theoretical and practical applications of this research. For theoretical applications, I discuss how a Pacific Studies research framework and Performance/Dance Studies create new possibilities for IR research. I also show how this thesis provides an interface for rethinking Taiwan’s positionality, especially Taiwan’s connections to and distance from the Pacific. For practical applications, I make recommendations for the future implementation of diplomacy and performative cultural diplomacy.</p>

Oceanic imaginaries in film and development: lenses of collaboration

<p>Cultural expression and culture have informed the formulation of development outcomes and processes, with varying success. Historically, this has occurred incidentally to mainstream development priorities such as primary education and health, and food security. In recent decades have, however, international institutions have come to recognise the importance of culture to development both as an area of development as well as something which informs development planning and processes. Often, the cultural development agenda, where driven by institutions, has been largely for instrumental purposes. Thus far, there has been an emphasis in research on the relative absence of culture from development definitions and processes. This thesis investigates the ways that film and film-making processes are contributing to a range of social and cultural outcomes in Oceania, and how these processes could be envisaged as contributing to a broader cultural development agenda. Using qualitative methods, this research examines how the regional imaginary is being practiced in different ways by film communities by drawing on several film projects across the region. This is couched in a discussion which examines the role of indigenous film as part of the global decolonisation agenda. It also highlights the importance of film as a means of decolonising identities and social practice. This research reveals the diverse motivations for collaborative kinships in film. These in turn demonstrate how understandings of relationships between individuals and communities can be enable horizontal development. This demonstrates the tension between dominant understandings of development and regionalism. This research also highlights how film kinships, informed by regional connections, are collaborating to grow film-making in Oceania. Using an intersectional framework drawing on scholarship from post-development theory and Pacific Studies, this research seeks to broaden the way that development is framed and practiced. While it is critical of some mainstream development tendencies – in policy formulation and practice – this research seeks to highlight how diverse and numerousapproaches are important. This research draws together an analysis of collaboration in film practice and endeavours to address inequalities in voice and representation of Oceanian peoples in film. It shows the contribution that film can make to expansive understandings of development in Oceania.</p>

"[They] danced, and, then, … it was our turn to dance": Performative cultural diplomacy between Tuvalu and Taiwan

<p>Taiwan (the Republic of China, ROC) contains vibrant communities of Pacific diplomats and students from Taiwan’s allies—as of August 2019, this included Tuvalu, Nauru, Solomon Islands, the Marshall Islands, Kiribati, and Palau—and sometimes non-allies like Papua New Guinea. These communities are overlooked in both Pacific Studies and International Relations (IR) research. While working as an interpreter for the Tuvalu Embassy in Taiwan, I interacted with Pacific and Taiwanese diplomatic communities and witnessed how the Tuvalu and Taiwan governments attempted to communicate culture through performative/dance projects (i.e., performative cultural diplomacy). These performative engagements challenge IR analysis of Asia in the Pacific, which sees Pacific-Taiwan diplomacy as primarily determined by competition between Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Instead, these engagements demonstrate how participants in Tuvalu-Taiwan performative cultural diplomacy, the majority of whom are not diplomats, carry with them multiple ideas and identities; consider their actions based on diverse contexts; and assign varying levels of importance to diplomacy, Tuvalu, and Taiwan. Consequently, in this thesis, I adopt a Pacific Studies research framework that emphasizes indigenous epistemologies, comparativity, interdisciplinarity, and a critical empowerment rationale to examine three topics: (1) Tuvaluan, Pacific, and Taiwanese conceptions of diplomacy; (2) the Tuvalu-Taiwan diplomatic relationship and its underlying assumptions; and (3) how Tuvalu-Taiwan performative cultural diplomacy both reflects and complicates diplomatic conceptions and assumptions. After introducing my research questions and structure in Chapter 1, in Chapter 2, I outline conceptions of diplomacy explicated by Pacific diplomats in Taiwan; Tuvaluan diplomats, officials, and traditional leaders in Tuvalu and Taiwan; and Taiwanese diplomats/officials in the same locations. I demonstrate how Tuvaluan/Pacific ideas of diplomacy often diverge from those held by Taiwanese diplomats/officials while also highlighting disparities among Tuvaluan and other Pacific views. In Chapter 3, I sketch discursive histories of Tuvalu-Taiwan diplomacy. I map how Tuvalu and Taiwan have characterized each other since establishing relations and trace the complex routes that structure how they currently imagine their diplomatic partner. Chapter 3 also shows how discursive histories both dovetail with and challenge diplomatic conceptions outlined in Chapter 2. Subsequently, in Chapters 4 to 6, I bring three Tuvalu-Taiwan performative cultural diplomacy projects into conversation with conceptual and discursive trends from Chapters 2 and 3. Here, I emphasize the voices of diplomats, officials, planners, performers, and audience members who engage with projects and underscore tensions that arise among participants and between participants and diplomats, officials, and audience members from their diplomatic partner. I also consider diplomatic conceptions, discourses, and assumptions discussed earlier in the thesis from the perspectives of project participants and observers to show how performative cultural diplomacy influences and illuminates diplomatic relationships. In the Conclusion, I explore the theoretical and practical applications of this research. For theoretical applications, I discuss how a Pacific Studies research framework and Performance/Dance Studies create new possibilities for IR research. I also show how this thesis provides an interface for rethinking Taiwan’s positionality, especially Taiwan’s connections to and distance from the Pacific. For practical applications, I make recommendations for the future implementation of diplomacy and performative cultural diplomacy.</p>

(Re)Viewing the Other: Gender Subversions in IndoFijian Performances

<p>Cultural performances are more than forms of entertainment and vehicles for conveying social and religious traditions. These acts are political acts that can exceed their role of promulgating hegemonic formations and instead be used to subvert and deconstruct existing social realities. This doctoral research focuses on performances that subvert IndoFijian heteronormative gender(s), namely: performances by female singers of qawwali, a genre of competitive singing historically exclusive to males; and lahanga naach, dances by cross-dressed males in Fiji and in the IndoFijian diaspora in New Zealand. Situated within the interdisciplinary field of Pacific Studies, this research draws upon cultural and gender studies as well as materials and knowledge from and about Pacific and Indian cultures to examine these cultural performances. Concepts such as Butler’s theory of performativity and Hall’s theory of articulation are employed to argue that cultural performances are performative in the sense that they not only depict what already exists, but initiate and materialise what can be. This argument is discussed and illustrated through both ethnographic and historical engagement and research methods, interweaving transcriptions of performances with relevant academic literature and oral history interviews of performers as well as cultural experts represented by community leaders, academics and gender activists. This dissertation begins by discussing the idea of a liminal other in relation to ethnic and gender identities and establishes the liminal other’s position in the overarching argument of this research. This is followed by detailed descriptions and analysis of qawwali and lahanga naach, respectively, in accordance with an additional research objective of documenting and creating archival records for these two performance genres. The latter part of the dissertation returns to themes of gender subversion, hegemony and performativity, discussing examples of the real-life implications of embodying liminal identities. The dissertation concludes by emphasising the need for more research on performance cultures in the Pacific and draws attention to how individual agency can promote social change and impact meaning-making mechanisms of social groups through the means of cultural performance. Importantly, this research presents an alternative outlook on the gendered understandings of IndoFijians by including the voices of the disadvantaged who occupy liminal spaces in society.</p>

(Re)Viewing the Other: Gender Subversions in IndoFijian Performances

<p>Cultural performances are more than forms of entertainment and vehicles for conveying social and religious traditions. These acts are political acts that can exceed their role of promulgating hegemonic formations and instead be used to subvert and deconstruct existing social realities. This doctoral research focuses on performances that subvert IndoFijian heteronormative gender(s), namely: performances by female singers of qawwali, a genre of competitive singing historically exclusive to males; and lahanga naach, dances by cross-dressed males in Fiji and in the IndoFijian diaspora in New Zealand. Situated within the interdisciplinary field of Pacific Studies, this research draws upon cultural and gender studies as well as materials and knowledge from and about Pacific and Indian cultures to examine these cultural performances. Concepts such as Butler’s theory of performativity and Hall’s theory of articulation are employed to argue that cultural performances are performative in the sense that they not only depict what already exists, but initiate and materialise what can be. This argument is discussed and illustrated through both ethnographic and historical engagement and research methods, interweaving transcriptions of performances with relevant academic literature and oral history interviews of performers as well as cultural experts represented by community leaders, academics and gender activists. This dissertation begins by discussing the idea of a liminal other in relation to ethnic and gender identities and establishes the liminal other’s position in the overarching argument of this research. This is followed by detailed descriptions and analysis of qawwali and lahanga naach, respectively, in accordance with an additional research objective of documenting and creating archival records for these two performance genres. The latter part of the dissertation returns to themes of gender subversion, hegemony and performativity, discussing examples of the real-life implications of embodying liminal identities. The dissertation concludes by emphasising the need for more research on performance cultures in the Pacific and draws attention to how individual agency can promote social change and impact meaning-making mechanisms of social groups through the means of cultural performance. Importantly, this research presents an alternative outlook on the gendered understandings of IndoFijians by including the voices of the disadvantaged who occupy liminal spaces in society.</p>

'The Bitter Sweetness of the Space Between': Creative Reflections of Pasifika Ethnic Mixedness

<p>This Master of Arts thesis investigates and draws conclusions regarding how creative arts present accommodating spaces for articulating and understanding cultural mixedness amongst Pacific populations in New Zealand. New Zealand is home to an expanding Pacific population; statistics identify a growing number of these Pacific people who are multi-ethnic, and who are claiming their mixedness in official census data. As Pacific populations have grown, Pacific artists have risen to national prominence in visual, literary and performing arts. Many of these artists have themselves been of mixed ancestry. This thesis examines the work of three female New Zealand artists of mixed Samoan-English or Samoan-Indian descent, asking, “How do these artists and their work express their cultural mixedness?” Discussion centres on mixed media visual artist Niki Hastings-McFall, who is of English and Samoan descent; spoken word poet Grace Taylor, also of English and Samoan descent; and musical performer Aaradhna Patel, who is of Indian and Samoan descent. Placing both the creative work and public commentary of these three artists at its centre, this thesis explores how these artists publicly identify with their Samoan heritage as well as their other heritage(s); how they use their art as a platform for identity articulation; and how creative arts provide flexible and important spaces for self-expression. The thesis draws its theoretical underpinnings from Pacific studies, art history, transnational cultural studies and postcolonial studies, and utilizes Samoan and Tongan conceptions of vā as a key analytic tool.</p>

'The Bitter Sweetness of the Space Between': Creative Reflections of Pasifika Ethnic Mixedness

<p>This Master of Arts thesis investigates and draws conclusions regarding how creative arts present accommodating spaces for articulating and understanding cultural mixedness amongst Pacific populations in New Zealand. New Zealand is home to an expanding Pacific population; statistics identify a growing number of these Pacific people who are multi-ethnic, and who are claiming their mixedness in official census data. As Pacific populations have grown, Pacific artists have risen to national prominence in visual, literary and performing arts. Many of these artists have themselves been of mixed ancestry. This thesis examines the work of three female New Zealand artists of mixed Samoan-English or Samoan-Indian descent, asking, “How do these artists and their work express their cultural mixedness?” Discussion centres on mixed media visual artist Niki Hastings-McFall, who is of English and Samoan descent; spoken word poet Grace Taylor, also of English and Samoan descent; and musical performer Aaradhna Patel, who is of Indian and Samoan descent. Placing both the creative work and public commentary of these three artists at its centre, this thesis explores how these artists publicly identify with their Samoan heritage as well as their other heritage(s); how they use their art as a platform for identity articulation; and how creative arts provide flexible and important spaces for self-expression. The thesis draws its theoretical underpinnings from Pacific studies, art history, transnational cultural studies and postcolonial studies, and utilizes Samoan and Tongan conceptions of vā as a key analytic tool.</p>