Gender, ritual and kinship in Oceania: anthropology and regional history

While ethnographic studies carried out in Amazonia have made it possible to theorise relations between humans and non-humans, oceanic research has provided essential analyses for understanding gender, thanks in particular, as far as Melanesia is concerned, to the work of Marilyn Strathern. According to Strathern, despite their diversity, the populations of Papua New Guinea have one thing in common: they do not regard gender as a property of individuals, but rather as a generalised means of differentiating activities (in this case, production for women and transactions for men), as she demonstrated in her fieldwork conducted in the 1960s among the Hagen, known for their large-scale ceremonial exchanges.

In the context of the current development of gender studies, the work of CREDO members on this theme deserves to be brought together in a collective research area. The aim will be to contribute, through concrete ethnographic studies, to the relational perspective on gender developed by anthropology, which differs from most of the work labelled ‘gender studies’, which is generally centred on the West and based on an often ‘assemblageist’ vision of gender, paying little attention to the links arising from kinship relations or other relations that are marked by gender but are not reduced to it.

Over the five-year period 2024-2028, the collective reflection on this theme will take several directions, focusing on the rituals at play in the construction of the individual. Other research will look at the possible reconfiguration of social relations when people express gender variations or are faced with a serious illness.