HVIDING, EDVARD
Edvard.hviding@sosantr.uib.no
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: edvard.hviding@sosantr.uib.no
Website: http://pacific.uib.no
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 Islands National Museum, 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 Western Province government.
With Graham Baines, Hviding developed the “Bergen Initiative” after the earthquake
and tsunami that hit the 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 Western Province 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 Christian Fellowship Church 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 menof-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 British Museum.
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
Education for the Pacific Islands. 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.