Symposia

• Positioning Culture within Pacific Christianities  

Working Sessions

• Affect and Place in the Contemporary Pacific
• De-colonising the Sea of Islands 
• Decolonizing Anthropology: A View from Oceania 
• Environmental Resistances in Oceania
• Growing Old in the Pacific
• Mana Moana: Protecting Sacredness
• Pacific Queer Communities and Artistic Creation
• Porgera, Whither and Whence? 
• The Proliferation of Models
• Satan in the Pacific 
• Stitching New Traditions: Quilting in Polynesia 

​​Informal Sessions

• 2019 International Year of Indigenous Languages
• Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change 
• Astronomies of Oceania 
• Connecting Wealth and Space: Environmental Intimacy Working Against Capitalism
• Considering Lata: Hero of a Thousand Faces
• Dreaming in the Pacific
• Education and Empowerment: Decolonising Schooling in Oceania​
• Honoring Kale Langlas​   
• Jean Guiart: L’ethnographie comme marathon d’une vie/Ethnography as Life’s Marathon 
• Kava: A Global Phenomenon?
• New Voices in Pacific Anthropology
• Rethinking Labor and Work in the Global Pacific​
• “The Soul and the Image”: The Story of Film in the Pacific
• Stratified Reproduction in a Global Oceania
• Uta ma Tai: Inside looking out in Pacific Island scholarship 
• Vā Moana: Space and relationality in Pacific thought and identity
• We will get over it when it is over: Race and Power in Oceania  
• Women and Politics in Polynesia

Working Session: Decolonizing Anthropology: A View from Oceania

Organizers: Marama Muru-Lanning and Lorena Gibson
 
Our informal session at the 2019 conference was attended by 29 participants and we had a productive conversation about a number of practical issues, including the relationship between anthropology and calls for decolonisation, different histories and genealogies of anthropology throughout Oceania, reflexivity and accountability, and why we choose to stay in anthropology. We collectively identified six broad themes that we will continue discussing at the 2020 conference, which are: citational practices (expanding the genealogy); anthropological writing practices/language/communication; what we are doing as teachers; social media opportunities; the difference between gatekeepers and leaders; and antisocial anthropologists. Our working session aims to generate a group of papers for publication in a variety of forums within and beyond academia. A thread we would like to see woven throughout all the papers is not whether we can decolonise anthropology, but how we might unsettle anthropology in ways firmly anchored in our Pacific places.

​If you would like to join our session, please email the session organisers for more information before 1 November 2019.
 
Marama Leigh Muru-Lanning, University of Auckland <m.murulanning@auckland.ac.nz>;
Lorena Gibson, Victoria University of Wellington <lorena.gibson@vuw.ac.nz>