Aktuelle Forschungen in der Ozeanistik (mit einem Schwerpunkt zum Thema "Kulturelle Aneignungen")
Workshop auf der Tagung der DGV in Frankfurt a.M. (30.09.-01.10.2009)International conference 'Race, Encounters, and the Constitution of Human Difference in Oceania'
College of Asia and the Pacific
The Australian National University
Canberra ACT Australia
20-22 January 2010
This conference will showcase the results of an Australian Research Council-funded project by Bronwen Douglas, Chris Ballard, and Elena Govor on 'European Naturalists and the Constitution of Human Difference in Oceania: Crosscultural Encounters and the Science of Race, 1768-1888'.
Keynote speakers will be Warwick Anderson (University of Sydney), Michael Bravo (University of Oxford), and Rainer Buschmann (Purdue University).
Keynote speakers will be Warwick Anderson (University of Sydney), Michael Bravo (University of Oxford), and Rainer Buschmann (Purdue University).
Scope
- 'Oceania' includes Australia, the Pacific Islands, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, and Island Southeast Asia. The time range is the heyday of modern colonialism, from the mid-18th century to World War II, when the science of race was invented, consolidated, entrenched, and challenged.
- Most sessions will address aspects of the history of race and encounters in one or more parts of this extended region. However, offers of papers on race and encounters in other parts of the world, or on the general significance of field materials in metropolitan racial theory, are also welcome.
Themes
- The conference will bring together the history of the science of race and the ethnohistory of particular encounters with indigenous people. In the process, it will dispute the recently challenged, but still widely-held stereotype that Europeans necessarily controlled the practice and the representation of encounters.
- A particular focus will be the interplay of discourse and praxis. 'Discourse' refers to contemporary theories in the science of man/science of race or to conventional ideas about human difference. 'Praxis' refers: (a) to the application of racial ideas by European travellers, missionaries, naturalists, settlers, administrators, or anthropologists in the context of encounters with indigenous people; (b) to the impact of indigenous agency on the reactions and representations of such outsiders; and (c) to the impact of field studies on metropolitan knowledge.
- Another focus will be on practices, genres, and technologies of representation: that is, the transitions from experience of encounters to first-hand genres such as field notes, journals, sketches, and photographs; and to reworked genres such as reports, narratives, scientific treatises, ethnographies, theoretical works, finished drawings, paintings, engravings, lithographs, or formal photographs.
Deadline
Papers givers, please submit the title of your paper with your name, institution, and an abstract of not more than 200 words by FRIDAY, 31 AUGUST 2009, to:
| Bronwen Douglas <bronwen.douglas@anu.edu.au> OR Chris Ballard <chris.ballard@anu.edu.au> |
Division of Pacific & Asian History, RSPAS The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200 Australia |