Experiencing New Worlds (Person, Space and Memory in the Contemporary Pacific)

The many different localities of the Pacific region have a long history of transformation, under both pre- and post-colonial conditions. More recently, rates of local transformation have increased tremendously under post-colonial regimes. The forces of globalization, which rapidly distribute commodities, images, and political and moral concepts across the region, have presented Pacific populations with an unprecedented need and opportunity to fashion new and expanded understandings of their cultural and individual identities.

This volume, the first in a new series, examines the forces of globalization at different levels, as they manifest themselves and operate across cultural, cognitive and biographical dimensions of human life in the Pacific. While posing familiar questions, it offers new answers through the integration of cultural and psychological methods. The contributors draw on practice theory, cognitive science and the anthropology of space and place while exploring the key analytical rubrics of human agency, memory and landscape.

Jürg Wassmann is Professor for Anthropology and Head of the Institute of Ethnology, University of Heidelberg. His field area is Papua New Guinea where he has carried out fieldwork among the Iatmul and the Yupno, and Bali, Indonesia. His publications include The Song to the Flying Fox (IPNGS 1991), Historical Atlas of Ethnic and Linguistic Groups in Papua New Guinea, Volume 3 (Wepf 1994), has edited Pacific Answers to Western Hegemony: Cultural Practices of Identity Construction (Berg 1998).

Katharina Stockhaus studied Languages and Cultures of Austronesia at the University of Hamburg and now is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Ethnology (University of Heidelberg) where she studies the life and work of indigenous Pacific authors and has taught courses on Maori Language, Pacific Migration in New Zealand and Pacific Literature.