University of Bergen, Norway (Anthropology)

University of Bergen, Norway (Anthropology)

Hviding, Edvard

University of Bergen, Norway (Anthropology)

Anthropology, resource management, history: Marovo and New Georgia islands.

Current affiliation, academic qualifications and contact details.

Professor Edvard Hviding

Department of Social Anthropology

University of Bergen

P.O. Box 7800

N-5020 Bergen

NORWAY

Tel. +47 5558 9264

Fax +47 5558 9260

Email:

Website:

Ph.D., Social Anthropology, University of Bergen (1993)

M.A., Social Anthropology, University of Bergen (1988)

Research

(PhD, Bergen 1993) is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen, Norway and an Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at James Cook University, Australia. Since 1986, Hviding has been engaged in long-term anthropological research in Solomon Islands, where he has carried out more than three years of fieldwork mainly in the Marovo Lagoon area of Western Province, from bases in the villages of Chea (on Marovo Island) and Tamaneke (in northern Marovo). He has also visited many other parts of Western Province and in Solomon Islands more widely in connection with his work during the 1990s for ICLARM (now the World Fish Centre), and has carried out consultancy work on traditional marine resource management in a number of other Pacific Islands nations. Hviding’s enduring research interests cover a range of interrelated topics such as fishing, agroforestry and the customary tenure of sea and land; kinship and social organization; cultural history and languages of New Georgia;indigenous environmental knowledge and epistemology; leadership and customary law; and the local manifestations and consequences of globalization (including the development initiatives of the Christian Fellowship Church). He has published widely on these aspects of his research, in the form of two monographs Guardians of Marovo Lagoon and Islands of Rainforest (the latter with Tim Bayliss-Smith).

Hviding also carries out activities that connect his anthropological and linguistic work with rural educational needs in Marovo Lagoon, as shown by the three multilingual books he has published in Marovo and other New Georgian languages (as well as English) and distributed to schools and villages around Marovo and northern New Georgia and at Gizo. Currently this aspect of his work takes place in the context of UNESCO and Solomon Islands Government projects on vernacular education, and has involved the distribution of his book Environmental Encyclopedia of Marovo Lagoon as a locally informed teaching tool to many schools affected by the 2007 earthquake and tsunami. With professional film producers and in cooperation with the Solomon IslandsNationalMuseum, Hviding has co-directed and co-produced several anthropological documentary films based on his research in Marovo, including Chea’s Great Kuarao, which has been widely screened in Solomon Islands.

Hviding leads the Bergen Pacific Studies Research Group based at his university, and coordinates the international research programme ”Pacific Alternatives: Cultural Heritage and Political Innovation in Oceania” with institutional partners in the Pacific (including the national museums of Solomon Islands and Vanuatu), Australia, the United States and Europe. This programme explores the possibilities for building a network of rural fieldworkers in several provinces of the Solomons, including prospects for reviving the cultural sector of the WesternProvince government.

With Graham Baines, Hviding developed the “Bergen Initiative” after the earthquake and tsunami that hitthe Western Solomons in 2007, in an attempt to connect the accumulated, mainly overseas scholarship on the Western Solomons to urgent and more long-term practical needs in that part of Solomon Islands. The establishment of the Western Solomons Research Database, in dialogue with WesternProvince leaders, is a major outcome of this initiative.

In addition to the Bergen Initiative and the ongoing practical work on vernacular education undertaken under UNESCO auspices with Mr. Aseri Yalangono (Director, Secondary Division, MEHRD) and other collaborators at the SIG Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development, Edvard Hviding is currently engaged in the following major projects concerning the Western Solomons:

Vernacular Environmental Education in the Western Solomons. Book project (for UNESCO) that examines the development of a pilot project in vernacular education founded in Hviding’s Environmental Encyclopedia of Marovo Lagoon, and that highlights the impressive written work submitted to the pilot project by students at primary and secondary schools in Marovo and North New Georgia.

Rescuing the Rural: The ChristianFellowshipChurch as a Rural Development Agent. Book project (with Shankar Aswani) about the recent history of the CFC and the remarkable record of the church as an independent social movement that consistently supported rural development during the years of tension and government collapse. The project builds on the close long-term association of both authors with the CFC, its people and its leaders, also including the knighting of the Rev. Ikan Rove in London in 2005.

Working Relations: The Royal Navy in late 19th-century New Georgia. Book project examining the interactions between the people of New Georgia and the British men-of-war HMS Penguin (which was engaged in surveying the New Georgia island during 1893-95) and HMS Royalist (which engaged in punitive expeditions on several occasions between 1889 and 1894). The project builds on Royal Navy logs and journals, and on recollections and oral history from New Georgia.

Solomon Islands artefacts between museums: the Western Solomons war canoe in contemporary political scenes. Book project (with Graham Baines) about Western Solomons war canoes as museum objects and as objects of various political scenes in today’s Western Solomons and Solomon Islands nation. The project builds on both authors’ long-term familiarity with war canoes and their stories in local circumstances (mainly Marovo and Vella Lavella) and on work at the BritishMuseum.

Key publications/reports/materials

ADD

Hviding, Edvard 2008. Reef and Rainforest: An Environmental Encyclopedia of Marovo Lagoon, Solomon Islands/ A Pilot Project in Vernacular Environmental Educationfor the PacificIslands. STUDY GUIDE AND TEACHER’S MANUAL.

Paris: UNESCO/LINKS.

Hviding, Edvard 2005. Village-level Documentation and Transmission of

Local Environmental Knowledge: A Pilot Project for Solomon Islands. Report to UNESCO-LINKS. Paris: UNESCO.