 |
ALAN HOWARDThe two of us, Mac Marshall and Eric Kjellgren, are delighted to nominate Alan Howard to become an Honorary Fellow of ASAO. Alan has been an international leader in developing the anthropology of Polynesia over the past three decades, a stalwart in our organization almost from its beginning, and he has held numerous ASAO leadership positions over the years. He has also been extremely active as a session organizer and contributor of papers at ASAO annual meetings. Alan's long-term commitment to research in Rotuma, and his dedication to finding ways in which his research results and those of others can benefit the Rotuman community as well as other scholars, offers an admirable example of the ways in which we anthropologists can repay the generosity of the people and communities who host us. He has used his excellent computer skills, for example, to develop the innovative Rotuma website that makes nearly all the extant published information on that island available online, and also provides a vital forum that links members of Rotuma's diaspora to each other and to their relatives in Fiji and Rotuma. Alan has published about this, and his example has spawned a number of similar ventures. Mac Marshall recalls that as he went through graduate school he endeavored to read all of the cutting edge work that was being done on kinship in Oceania, since that was where anthropological theory "happened" in those days. He remembers reading and being much impressed by a number of Alan's early articles, chapters, and books (e.g., Learning to be Rotuman). Alan also conducted extensive fieldwork on O'ahu (e.g., his book, Ain't No Big Thing), and collaborated with Paul Baker and numerous others in the multi-sited research project on the varied effects of migration from Samoa to Hawai'i and California. As he did with many graduate students at the University of Hawai'i during his decades of teaching there, Alan served both as a mentor and a dissertation committee member for Eric Kjellgren; and Eric, like so many of Alan's students before and since, is deeply grateful for his guidance, advice and enthusiasm. Since retirement, Alan has continued his active involvement with students, with ASAO, and with the Rotuman community. Perhaps the one thing, however, for which we are all very much in Alan's debt is his voluntarily assumed job as ASAO webmaster and the online ASAO archives. We are sure that we're not alone, following each year's annual meeting, in eagerly searching the archives link to view the latest meeting photographs once Alan has posted them. For all of these reasons we wholeheartedly nominate Alan Howard for Honorary Fellowship in ASAO. Mac Marshall Eric Kjellgren |