A dinosaur of Melanesian studies

Melanesian studies

Melanesia Beyond Diversity, Edited by R. J. May and Hank Nelson. Published by the Re search School of Pacific Stu dies, Australian National Uni versity, Canberra, 1982. Two volumes, 690 pp. $A20.00.

In 1980 the Research School of Pacific Studies organised a marathon of Melanesian semi nars. Fifty papers were pre sented over a period of four weeks. Forty-six of these (amounting to nearly half a million words) are now pre sented in two volumes of close typescript. No single person could possibly want to read all the papers, but almost any reader will find something of interest, and each paper will command a loyal following.

The reader who does stumble upon a nugget of illumination should mark the page carefully, because the volumes have no index, and an item of informa tion, once lost, is not easily recovered.

This is not so much a cohe rent publication, as a showcase of the information available in, or near, the research school. In a brief preface, the editors make no attempt to explain the title, nor do they hint at what may lie beyond the diversity evident in the papers them selves. The linguistic and cultu ral variety of Melanesia is now matched by the range of scholarly disciplines and approaches which attempt to explain conditions. A synthesis of this evidence would require much more than an editorial comment. Wisely then, the edi tors refrain from reaching any general conclusion frustra tingly, many of the contributors do the same. Collectors and librarians should certainly purchase these volumes: they contain a wealth of up-to-date research information, and it is not likely that we shall see another production of this kind again.

Volumes generated in this fashion cannot achieve com prehensiveness. There are some surprising areas of incom pleteness, despite the scale of the whole enterprise. Only

Peter Hastings addresses Irian Jaya at any length; only Linda Latham and Alan Ward consid er New Caledonia. The emph asis is upon Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, and Fiji (in that order).

Some sections (The Colonial Mastas, and Colonial and Post- Colonial Politics) attempt a thorough coverage of most of Melanesia. More often, the papers reflect the research in terests which scholars hap pened to be pursuing in and around Canberra at the time.

One paper is written by a Melanesian (John Waiko) and another by an ex-prime minis ter (E. G. Whitlam), both of whom happened to be in the school. Otherwise most of the contributors are conventional Australian scholars, with a sprinkling of academic journal ists, writing within their chosen disciplines and reviewing their favorite topics.

The research school was established in 1947, when the Australian Commonwealth Government was anxious for advice about its island neigh bors, whose significance had been demonstrated by the Paci fic War. The school has changed in several interesting ways since those urgent days, and the consequences are clear in the volumes under review.

Since the 19605, Australian in terest in Southeast Asia, and in super-power conflicts, has di luted the school’s Pacific in terests, although it remains the largest concentration in the world of Pacific-oriented scholarship.

With the passage of time and the growth of the research school, academic departments and disciplines have deflected scholars away from an inter disciplinary enthusiasm, and they are mainly caught up in the particular debates of each discipline. Linguists now write for other linguists, historians for other historians, and so on. The policy-advising role has also become much less evident.

Most of the studies presented here are either historical or else descriptive; they are usually

phrased to be understood by other scholars, rather than politicians or bureaucrats.

Those academics who do advise governments on econo mic, strategic, or social matters, are mainly absent from these pages.

At the time of the seminar, some scholars were already seeking other forms of express ion. On one hand, economists and political scientists and strategists were getting along side politicians privately (and former members of the re search school are quite well represented among advisers to the Labor Government in Aus tralia, as well as in the bureauc racies of island governments).

On the other hand there has been a search for access to a wider public.

One of the editors, Hank Nelson, was involved in the immensely successful ABC radio series, Taim Belong Mas ta, and the equally popular

documentary film Angels of War. These ventures have in spired other experiments in radio, film and television. The documentary film First Contact, for instance, not only competed for an Oscar, but also provoked a more lively discussion in the pages of PIM than any academic book could achieve.

Willingly or not, the rest of us will have to follow these paths, since the ANU Press has been discontinued. Many detailed studies, which do not lend themselves to radio or televi sion production, will continue to appear in learned journals; but block-busting monuments to scholarship are not likely to be repeated. If scholarship of this calibre can be presented to a wider (and not necessarily literate) audience, that is surely to everyone’s advantage.

Melanesia Beyond Diversity is an academic dinosaur: over specialised, bulky, clumsy (and nutritious), but now obsolete.

Donald Denoon.