Symposia

• Jean Guiart: L’ethnographie comme marathon d’une vie/Ethnography as Life’s Marathon​​

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Working Sessions

• 2022-2032 International Decade of Indigenous Languages: Pacific Languages
• Being and Belonging: Technologies of Reproduction
• Decolonising Sea of Islands 
• Growing Old in the Pacific
• Mana Moana: Protecting Sacredness
• Proliferation of Models
• Race and Power in Oceania
• Rethinking Decolonization in Papua New Guinea
• "The Soul and the Image": The Story of Film in the Pacific
• Vā Moana: Space and Relationality in Pacific Thought and Identity​

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​​Informal Sessions

• Being Pacific Islander Pasifika, Māori, Indigenous Australian during the Era of Black Lives Matter 
• Complexities of Collaboration on Climate Change
• Documentation as Relation: Experiments with and Challenges to Knowledge
• Dogs and Their Humans
• Ends of Oblivion: Continuities and Discontinuities in Oceania’s Pasts
• Food Sovereignty in the Pacific
• Museums and Repatriation
• Pacific Island Politics, Populism, and Democracy
• Pacific Perspectives: The Fluidity of Time, Space and Relations
• Possessing the Pacific City: A Comparative Dispossessions Working Group
• Slouching towards Christian Theocracy in Western Polynesia
• Trust and Care in Pacific Health Systems
• Talanoa on "The Healer and the Psychiatrist"​

Working Session: Growing Old in the Pacific 

Organizers: Hilary Lapsley and Marama Muru-Lanning

This working session builds three sessions held at prior ASAO conferences, but we do wish to invite new contributors into the 2021 session. Before the virtual session in 2021 participants are asked to supply an abstract by 15th December 2020 and a paper draft (or at least full notes to enable useful discussion at the session) by 23rd January 2021. These will be circulated to all workshop participants. Discussion at the workshop will focus on developing each paper draft for publication. 

Cross-cutting themes arising from the 2019 Auckland session were categorized as follows:

• Pacific ageing as relational not chronological? 
• Is ageing in the Pacific the same now as it was in earlier times? Role of elders within households, and how it may have been changing over time.
• Ageing and wellbeing...what does wellbeing mean for older people in the Pacific? 
• Documenting social changes in ageing and greater remove from traditions.
• Research on Pacific ageing. Does telling their stories empower communities?
• Conceptions of the status of older persons as embedded in proverbs, sayings, legends or stories that reflect proscriptions and templates for the elderly in various cultural contexts.

In 2021 discussion which focused on identifying joint themes across the contributions and theoretical frameworks which might hold the contributions together. Two common themes emerged:

• ageing in place, with a Pacific twist focusing on whenua/va; 
• ageing with dignity (includes positivity, spirituality, faith, identity strength, and the gifts bestowed by elders).

Submitted papers will address both these themes if practicable, in relation to their particular research project.


For more information please contact Hilary Lapsley at <h.lapsley@auckland.ac.nz> or Marama Muru-Lanning <m.murulanning@auckland.ac.nz>