CALL FOR PAPERS

« A Pacific World amid Globalization »

An issue of the Journal Hermès

(CNRS/ISCC)

http://www.iscc.cnrs.fr/spip.php?article511

Proposals to be sent before 30th December 2011

Scientific coordination

• Dominique  Barbe, Associate Professor, University of New-Caledonia.
• Renault Meltz, Associate Professor, University of French Polynesia, on sabbatical leave at the CNRS (ISCC).

Argumentaire

“There is a Pacific world”, General de Gaulle found out in surprise while on a private journey during his “crossing of the desert” when he had almost totally withdrawn from public life, and a decade later he attended the first nuclear test in Mururoa. That Pacific world, with its blend of indigenous and Anglo-Saxon cultures, of centripetal insularities and cross-ocean movements, remains largely unknown to most French people, be it historically or in its present development.

When the Pacific gets the attention of the media or academic institutions in France, this is generally done through a geopolitical or economic angle. The journal Hermès will devote a full issue to the “Big Ocean” from the alternative viewpoint of cultures, focusing on that world for its own sake, as a conservatory of cultures unknown to Europe, or as a microcosm, if not a privileged location, for the globalization underway. Special attention will be devoted to the Pacific’s blind spots for the French public opinion, i.e. Oceania’s archipelagoes that are neither under the sovereignty of France nor of the Commonwealth.

In keeping with its interdisciplinary approach, the journal will accept any proposal in French or in English as long as they are congruent with the five lines of research which were decided upon by the Editorial Board.

Line 1 — From a World apart to Becoming a Part of the World

Diachronic or synchronic proposals will deal with the now already old integration of the Pacific area and its contacts (discoveries, dominations, exchanges) with the rest of the world since the end of the XVIIIth Century until the present day.

Line 2 — Language and Languages

This line of research will aim at examining the Pacific’s linguistic diversity, the establishment of a lingua franca (namely English) as well as creolization processes; which place does francophony hold in this space, which are its unifying languages, what communication vectors are there beyond linguistic diversity?

Line 3 — Religion

The importance of evangelization in connecting the Pacific with the West is well known; what is less documented is the permanence of missionary networks, the reception of the evolution of the Catholic Church, Islam’s penetration thanks to philanthropic initiatives, the importance of religious sects — those are the manifold research topics that need to be addressed in order to measure the Pacific’s integration within religious globalization.

Line 4 — Technology and Circulation of Ideas

The integration of the Pacific area is characterized by the usual dialectics between the progress of communications means and the circulation of knowledge and ideas. How can we best think out the connection between technical progress (telegraph, cinema, airplanes, television) and the processes of acculturation and cultural exchanges?

Line 5 — Art and the Art Market

Art (artistic creation, the art market, collections) provides a particularly fruitful approach for assessing the Pacific’s integration into globalization, from the ethnological approach of the first Western collectors to the latest trends of appreciating aboriginal art on the global art market, in which the West’s cultural centres played a major part.

Modalities of submission

Proposals for papers, with title, a 2,000 sign abstract (papers should not exceed 15,000-20,000 signs including spaces) and a short CV, are to be sent

before 30th December 2011.

Please indicate the line of research which will be focused upon and send them to : renaud.meltz@iscc.cnrs.fr.