School of Languages and Linguistics - Research Publications
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ItemWorking Together in Vanuatu: Research Histories, Collaborations, Projects and Reflections(ANU Press, 2011-10-01)This collection is derived from a conference held at the Vanuatu National Museum and Cultural Centre (VCC) that brought together a large gathering of foreign and indigenous researchers to discuss diverse perspectives relating to the unique program of social, political and historical research and management that has been fostered in that island nation. While not diminishing the importance of individual or sole-authored methodologies, project-centered collaborative approaches have today become a defining characteristic of Vanuatu’s unique research environment. As this volume attests, this environment has included a dynamically wide range of both ni-Vanuatu and foreign researchers and related research perspectives, most centrally including archaeologists and anthropologists, linguists, historians, legal studies scholars and development practitioners. This emphasis on collaboration has emerged from an ongoing awareness across Vanuatu’s research community of the need for trained researchers to engage directly with pressing social and ethical concerns, and out of the proven fact that it is not just from the outcomes of research that communities or individuals may be empowered, but also through their modes and processes of implementation, as through the ongoing strength and value of the relationships they produce. With this in mind, the papers presented here go beyond the mere celebration of collaboration by demonstrating Vanuatu’s specific environment of cross-cultural research as a diffuse set of historically emergent methodological approaches, and by showing how these work in actual practice.
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ItemA South Efate dictionary( 2011)This dictionary has been the product of collaborative work with a number of speakers of the language of South Efate. It is part of an ongoing project that includes the recording of stories in the language, a selection from which is produced as ‘Natrauswen nig Efat’.
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ItemNatrauswen nig Efat: stories from South Efate( 2011)This book presents a selection of stories recorded mainly in Erakor village, Efate, Vanuatu since the mid-1990s. This collection of stories is a result of my collaboration with a number of Erakor villagers. The stories presented here are not and could not claim to be a comprehensive view of Erakor tradition. Each is the result of the speaker’s choice of what they would tell me and reflects their understanding of what is significant, based on my request for them to talk about any topic, but largely framed by kastom (traditional) story, history or personal story. These are the categories into which I have placed the stories. This distinction is not unproblematic as personal stories can become indistinguishable from kastom stories when magical events intervene in the narrator’s life, and can also reflect historical events in which the narrator inevitably finds themself. The collection presented here aims primarily to provide a record of aspects of Erakor life for South Efate speakers and for interested outsiders. Given that little else is published about this village the present set of stories is a first step, one that I hope will be followed up with more collaboration from Erakor villagers.