We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
Provincialising Lakatoro: Orienting sociality through a state institution in Vanuatu.
- Authors
Rousseau, Benedicta
- Abstract
Focusing on Lakatoro, a provincial centre in Vanuatu, this article explores the ways in which a state institution may allow kastom-based sociality to proceed for the local population. Rather than considering kastom and the state as necessarily separate, it is demonstrated that the institutions of the state can provide the objective forms needed for kastom to exist in urban space. The article discusses three ways in which this happened-through a staff handbook, daily prayer meetings, and a court case-arguing that 'the province's' polyvalence provided a means by which Lakatoro could be experienced as a place. And that this, in turn, provided a way in which the local population could understand the town to be imbued with appropriate sociality, as measured by kastom.
- Subjects
VANUATU; PUBLIC spaces; PUBLIC institutions; PROVINCES; POPULATION; PRAYER meetings
- Publication
Australian Journal of Anthropology, 2012, Vol 23, Issue 2, p197
- ISSN
1035-8811
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/j.1757-6547.2012.00181.x