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Nakomaha: a Counter‐Colonial Life and its Contexts. Anthropological Approaches to Biography
Author(s) -
MacClancy Jeremy
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
oceania
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.356
H-Index - 25
eISSN - 1834-4461
pISSN - 0029-8077
DOI - 10.1002/j.1834-4461.2007.tb00012.x
Subject(s) - biography , indigenous , expatriate , colonialism , style (visual arts) , subject (documents) , sociology , ethnography , history , anthropology , aesthetics , art , computer science , art history , ecology , archaeology , library science , biology
ABSTRACT In the anthropology of Melanesia, local life‐histories or biographies have all too often been presented in a non‐problematic, acritical manner. Instead of repeating this hide‐bound style in an unthinking manner, I attempt to be more ethnographically sensitive to local realities and to open up the genre by presenting information about a ni‐Vanuatu leader in a deliberately achronic style. By providing relevant data in terms of their sources, I put up front the biases and blindspots of each source, to enable easier assessment of their worth and to forestall premature closure. In the process I examine the conflictive dialogue between locals and expatriate officials in Vanuatu between the 1940s and 1960s. The final aim is that the open‐ended approach adopted here makes the resulting text more accessible to indigenous readers, who might wish to produce their own version of the subject's life‐history. Writing this kind of biography can thus be viewed as a further attempt towards decolonizing the anthropology of former colonial states.