2CP_1-55


Currently, three broad approaches to doing research into human phe-
nomena are competing across Oceania. The dominant approach, intro-
duced to the region by westerners, relies on discipline-based concepts,
theories, and methods. Despite various independence and decolonization
activities, disciplinary thinking still guides most formal projects and
research-based publications. Though as yet considerably less common, an
alternative perspective emphasizing indigenous interpretations is receiv-
ing increasing attention. This approach encourages researchers to rely on
place-specific values, pedagogies, philosophies, and epistemologies unique
to Pacific Islanders. A third approach, focused on concrete activities, is
also available to researchers, although this perspective has as yet sparked
relatively little discussion. Activities-focused research illustrates what
some continental scholars call “the practice turn” (Schatzki 2001). This
approach generally de-emphasizes not only disciplinary concerns but also
efforts to compose interpretations. 

Elements of all three approaches appear in much research focused on
Oceania. Still, these perspectives differ enough to warrant thinking about
them separately, especially since the choice of which to emphasize deter-
mines so much about the research process and product that follows. Epeli
Hau‘ofa’s shifting research foci provide illustration of the impact of per-
spectival choice. Hau‘ofa began within a disciplinary perspective, com-
pleting a dissertation and publications in anthropology, while teaching a
range of social science courses at the University of South Pacific (see, eg,
Hau‘ofa 1975, 1977, 1981, 1987). Later, in an influential series of essays
(1993, 1997, 2000), Hau‘ofa shifted to what I am here labeling an inter-
pretive perspective. In this work, Hau‘ofa drew more from indigenous
thought than from disciplines, in part, he explained, because he could no

33

The Contemporary Pacific, Volume 18, Number 1, 33–55
© 2006 by University of Hawai‘i Press

Three Competing Research 
Perspectives for Oceania

Houston Wood



34 the contemporary pacific • 18:1 (2006)

longer support the consequences of such heavy reliance on continental
points of view (1993). In the past few years, Hau‘ofa has shifted his focus
once again so that now, as director of the Oceania Centre for Arts and
Culture, he emphasizes practices. While disciplines and interpretations
remain a part of the work of the Oceania Centre, its primary purpose is
to encourage the flourishing of contemporary visual and performing arts
practices (Hau‘ofa 2003, 7).

Hau‘ofa’s shifts in perspective also demonstrate the profound conse-
quences that can result from choosing to emphasize one research per-
spective over others. Through my examination of each of these perspec-
tives I have come to believe that, in general, Hau‘ofa’s and others current
focus on practices is preferable to discipline- and interpretation-based
approaches. This evaluation, of course, reflects my own, perhaps idio-
syncratic values. I judge research in large measure on how much it seems
likely to promote diversity in Oceania, as well as on how much it supports
place-based autonomies. Research that encourages the vigor of differences
among people, languages, and practices generally seems more valuable to
me than research that has no or negative effects on Oceania’s (and Earth’s)
threatened multiplicities. 

Perhaps surprisingly, I do not evaluate research perspectives on the basis
of how much they seem likely to create new knowledge, an explicit goal
for many researchers. The notion that knowledge can or should grow with
each new generation or project embodies what seems to me an unneces-
sarily narrow view of both the nature and the value of knowledge. One
could as easily imagine valuing most those research projects in Oceania
that restrain or reverse the so-called growth of knowledge. Many people
in the region value the knowledge of their ancestors more than what is
considered new. Also, much of what is called new knowledge in the region
tends to silence and demean precontact knowledge systems. But whether
disciplinary, interpretive, and practice approaches to research tend to
encourage or discourage the growth of knowledge is irrelevant to my cri-
teria for judging these perspectives—that is, how much they encourage
diversity and autonomy in the region.

Indigenous and nonindigenous researchers with different values may
rate these approaches differently. All would likely agree, however, that
each researcher’s choice of theories, concepts, and methods shapes the
eventual results. These pages aim to help clarify the consequences of
choosing a disciplinary-, interpretive-, or practice-based point of view. 



wood • three research perspectives for oceania 35

The Discipline-based Research Approach

Discipline-based approaches introduced by colonizers still dominate pro-
fessional research throughout Oceania. Indeed, there would be very little
formal research in the region if all research grounded in anthropology,
communication, geography, economics, education, history, political sci-
ence, psychology, sociology, and cultural and literary studies were to dis-
appear. Inertia provides a partial explanation: Since most research has
been based in disciplines for many decades, it is generally easier to repeat,
with variations, projects like those that have already been done. Money
is also an important factor. Funding agencies both within and outside the
region generally reject proposals that do not invoke disciplinary theories
and terms. Discipline-based research in the region also has the advantage
of enabling Oceania’s researchers to communicate with other researchers
who are associated with immense economies and governments on distant
continents. Many well-intentioned researchers in Oceania continue with
discipline-based projects to facilitate dialogue with powerful people on
continents. These researchers aspire to speak disciplinary truths to power
in hopes that elites will behave better toward the people in Oceania than
they have in the past. 

Some researchers also continue to rely on their disciplines because they
believe the associated theories, concepts, and methods provide a superior
way of understanding reality. Timothy Ferris has described this as the faith
that researchers have “come of age in the Milky Way” (1988). Physical
and life scientists now think about reality in the same ways as all mature
beings throughout the galaxies, according to Ferris. In mathematics, sci-
entists employ a conceptual system that describes reality as it must uni-
versally be described. Proponents of this view believe that mathematics is
not culture bound, or even Earth bound, because mathematics is the lan-
guage the universe speaks to itself.

I have doubts about such claims for mathematics and for the natural
sciences, but even if accepted, these claims do not seem to justify similar
claims for the contemporary humanities and social sciences. Disciplinary
research into human phenomena shows little evidence of having “come
of age” in the Milky Way, in Oceania, or anywhere. Language, customs,
groups, beliefs, and other human processes do not speak the language of
equations, to their analysts or to their producers. As a consequence, the



36 the contemporary pacific • 18:1 (2006)

theories, concepts, and methods that disciplinary researchers use to inter-
pret Oceania remain in flux, contradictory, inconsistent, and often inco-
herent. Conclusions about Oceania produced within the humanities and
social sciences seldom last more than a few decades. For example, four of
the most commonly employed concepts today—“identity,” “indigenous,”
“globalization,” and “governance,”—were little used just fifty years ago.1

At that time, concepts such as “norms,” “evolution,” “development,” and
“race” were common, though these descriptors are now generally dis-
missed as outdated. Disciplinary approaches have their benefits, some of
which are described above. But I do not think researchers should choose
disciplinary over interpretive, practice, or other approaches on the basis
of claims the human sciences possess superior ways of knowing. 

Multiple critiques of discipline-based perspectives have been offered for
decades, both on continents and across Oceania. Especially prominent
have been Michel Foucault’s descriptions of ways that disciplines function
to limit the scope of possible research projects (see, eg, Foucault 1980). In
Oceania, writers have pointed out that disciplinary divisions of knowledge
misrepresent how most Pacific Islanders customarily experience their own
worlds (see, eg, Gegeo and Watson-Gegeo 2001, 2002; Meyer 2003). Dis-
ciplines that separate the spiritual from the political, literature from his-
tory, or economics from psychology, for example, misconstrue how most
people in Oceania live. Resorting to interdisciplinary approaches—the
remedy chosen by some—does not solve the problems associated with
dividing into parts what people experience as whole.

The continuing dominance of humanities and social science research in
Oceania would be troublesome, I think, even if it were clear that they do
employ superior epistemologies. Every use of disciplinary concepts, theo-
ries, and methods asserts not only that continent-based perspectives pro-
vide the best ways to comprehend the people of Oceania, but also that all
peoples in Oceania can be understood in much the same way. When dis-
ciplines describe differences among peoples, they do so within a univer-
salizing frame. So Marshall Sahlins (1995), for example, wrote a book
about “how ‘Natives’ [Hawaiians] think,” not to answer questions about
or for the benefit of Hawaiians, but for the benefit of anthropologists.
Historians collect local histories throughout the region; literary research-
ers study the oral, danced, and carved literatures; anthropologists investi-
gate religions; political scientists examine the mechanisms of governance;
psychologists seek the cognitive scripts; and so on. Each assumes their dis-



wood • three research perspectives for oceania 37

cipline has prepared them to know one aspect of Oceania’s people. It is
not acceptable for a discipline-based researcher to say, “Those people are
so different from how I am trained to think that I cannot use concepts,
methods, and theories developed elsewhere to understand them.” Unless
researchers accept the possibility of such incommensurable differences,
however, they cannot embrace a belief the other may be fundamentally
unlike the researcher, and that deep and consequential human diversity
really exists. 

Disciplines are part of the homogenization of the world. In asserting the
ability to know, disciplines encourage their practitioners to form opinions
about how others should live. Discipline-based research undermines place-
based decision making about local cultural, economic, and political mat-
ters. Because expert researchers tend to believe their theories, concepts,
and methods provide universally appropriate knowledge, they often feel
an ethical obligation to guide local peoples when these people confront
issues that researchers believe they know much about. Discipline-based
researchers also tend to subscribe to the view that educated elites gener-
ally know what is best for a people, especially when momentous decisions
must be made about economic investments, for example, or governmen-
tal plans. 

It may be, then, that even those who believe their theories, concepts,
and methods “have come of age in the Milky Way” may wish to cease
producing discipline-based research. Researchers who desire an increased
diversity in and local autonomy for Oceania will likely emphasize alter-
native perspectives. 

Interpretation-based Research

Dissatisfaction with Western-based disciplines helped spark interest in the
interpretation-based approaches now increasingly embraced across Ocea-
nia. Albert Wendt elaborated some of the rationale for this perspective in
his pioneering essay, “Towards a New Oceania” (1976). Related calls were
also made by those promoting the “Pacific Way” and the “Melanesian
Way” (see Fortune 2000; Narokobi 1980). Hau‘ofa’s essays, mentioned
earlier, increased interest in this approach, and interpreting Oceania
through the use of indigenous concepts, theories, metaphors, and myths
has become common in the last decade or so.2 I have been a proponent of
this approach (Wood 1999, 2003), and I believe that research emphasiz-



38 the contemporary pacific • 18:1 (2006)

ing Oceania-based interpretations generally promotes diversity and place-
based sovereignty in the region better than discipline-based approaches
do. Nonetheless, there may be reasons to resist making interpretation-
based research the new dominant perspective across the region.

There is, first, the problem that interpretations tend to be shaped by
pressures for coherence. Many researchers are likely to be influenced by
appeals to “rationality,” and so to seek interpretations that connect logi-
cally or, at least, do not clearly contradict each other. Preferences for
coherence, however, are more likely to reflect formal, written styles of
thinking than the daily behaviors of the people being described. Interpre-
tations may also be chosen for their apparent cohesiveness with other
interpretations rather than for how closely they describe the phenomena
observed. Interpretation-based research in general may thus tend system-
atically to underestimate the heterogeneity and diversity that constitute
what so many believe is most valuable about Oceania (see, eg, Wendt
1976; Hau‘ofa 1993; Teaiwa 2001a, 2001b).

Interpretation-based research also faces the problem that it tends to
lead to broader interpretations rather than more particular ones. Gener-
alizing narratives are often considered to explain or subsume smaller nar-
ratives. Associated with this are pressures to find a single best interpreta-
tion, as if only one interpretation, myth, or theory could be correct. This
quest is delightfully illustrated in Vilsoni Hereniko’s Woven Gods (1995).
Though he also relied on discipline- and practice-based research strate-
gies, Hereniko’s study is primarily structured as a search for the single
best interpretation of Rotuman clowning, among the many candidates
provided by anthropologists, Rotumans, and Hereniko’s own visions and
dreams. Hereniko has produced a master interpretation that emphasizes
a general Rotuman desire for harmony. His study relies on this to inter-
pret clowning at Rotuman weddings as “a sanctioned performance by the
ha

.
n mane‘a

.
k su that is potentially subversive of the status quo” (1995,

141). Though he acknowledged that Rotumans in general have little inter-
est in such grand formulations (1995, 93), Hereniko used his master inter-
pretation to explain many other activities in Rotuma as well. 

Hereniko concluded Woven Gods by undermining his claims. “Do I
hear a clown laughing somewhere?” (1995, 141), he wrote, suggesting the
book has been mocking his and other interpreting-selves throughout.
Nonetheless, it seems to me that, more than offering comic subversions of
the impulse to interpret, Woven Gods illustrates the distorting pressures



wood • three research perspectives for oceania 39

that lead many researchers to produce generalizing stories. Even Here-
niko’s subsequent feature film, The Land Has Eyes (2004), appears more
to offer a revised version of the master narrative developed in Woven
Gods than to ridicule those researchers who seek master interpretations.
Of course, composing generalizing narratives, theories, and myths may be
appropriate for many writers and speakers in many situations. Those
who rely principally on interpretation-based research, however, face pres-
sures to produce master narratives even when multiple smaller interpre-
tations may better reflect how those they are working with actually expe-
rience their worlds. 

Interpretation-based research also faces a problem of impermanence.
Though this type of research generally aims to produce lasting interpre-
tations, few research-based explanations last for long. Interpretations
more frequently work like utterances in conversations: one interpretation
leads to others, which lead to more interpretations, and so on. Sequences
of both oral and written interpretations are important, of course, but
researchers who emphasize interpretations usually desire to offer more
than “just talk.” 

George Hu‘eu Sanford Kanahele’s Kü Kanaka, Stand Tall: A Search for
Hawaiian Values demonstrates the difficulties (1986). This book of more
than five hundred pages pioneered the sort of indigenous-based interpre-
tations that have since become more common throughout Oceania. Kü
Kanaka relies on diverse research methodologies to create lengthy inter-
pretations of “traditional Hawaiian values, . . . [and] uncover the essence
of the Hawaiian’s reason for living” (Kanahele 1986, 13). Kanahele first
worked with about a hundred Hawaiians, “selected as to represent a cross-
section of the Hawaiian community” (1986, 18). Kanahele developed a
list of twenty- five core values and then drew on extensive written and oral
sources to detail the meaning of these values for traditional and contem-
porary Hawaiians. Along the way, Kanahele displayed impressive abili-
ties as a researcher, writer, and interpreter. 

A quote from John Dominis Holt on the back cover of the book states,
“A treasure, Kü Kanaka will provide us through the ages a source of mana
and knowledge not previously found in a single book.” In fact, however,
Kü Kanaka does not seem to have provided useful interpretations for even
a decade, at least not for the researchers and writers with whom I am
acquainted. Lilikalä Kame‘eleihiwa’s pathbreaking history, Native Land
and Foreign Desires: Pehea Lä E Pono Ai (1992), published six years after



40 the contemporary pacific • 18:1 (2006)

Kanahele’s book, also offers detailed interpretations of Hawaiian values
but does not mention Kü Kanaka. Nor are Kanahele’s interpretations
cited in later books by such influential Native Hawaiians as Manulani
Aluli Meyer (2003), Jon Kamakawiwo‘ole Osorio (2002), Noenoe K Silva
(2004), and Haunani-Kay Trask (1999). Nonindigenous researchers have
similarly ignored the interpretations offered in Kü Kanaka; for example,
Marshall Sahlins composed his 1995 book-length response to Gananath
Obeyesekere’s 1992 volume contrasting Hawaiian and European values
without referencing Kanahele’s earlier work.

In the natural sciences, as I have suggested, one may be able to create
cumulative formulations, but new interpretations of human actions in
Oceania and beyond will likely be composed by new interpreters again
and again. Later researchers’ disinterest in Kanahele’s long book seems
typical of the fate of most research-based interpretations. “Each age,” as
Ralph Waldo Emerson famously declared, “must write its own books”
(1837). In the world of research interpreters, ages seldom seem to last even
ten years.

These problems—the pressures for coherence, the tendency to seek
meta-narratives, the absence of cumulativeness—are troublesome, but
not, I think, as serious as a fourth difficulty associated with interpretation-
based projects. Researchers are generally not interested in interpretations
as an end in themselves but rather as ways of explaining concrete human
activities. Unfortunately, there is no clear relationship between interpre-
tations and actual behavior. Getting an interpretation “right” does not
provide definite knowledge about any specific action. Interpretations are
often treated as causes, but this is based more on faith than on analysis or
evidence. So, for example, no specific navigational, burial, dance, or other
cultural practices can be derived from Kanahele’s or anyone’s interpreta-
tion of Native Hawaiian values. After one observes a practice, it may be
possible to say whether it fits an interpreted value. The reverse is not true,
however; if one does not know a particular practice—if it is “lost”—then
knowing its “values” will not lead to its recovery. 

Elise Huffer, alone and in collaboration with Ropate Qalo, is one of the
few researchers in Oceania who has tried to formulate how interpretations
may be connected to concrete behaviors (see Huffer 2005; Huffer and
Qalo 2004). Like many in Oceania who are calling for more emphasis on
interpretation-based approaches, Huffer began by rejecting disciplinary
approaches because they reflect not a universal but only one particular cul-



wood • three research perspectives for oceania 41

tural view. Instead, Huffer called for researchers in the region to work at
helping people interpret and articulate their “political values and ethics”
(2005, 133). Huffer articulated her perspective on the link between inter-
pretations and actions. Using Samuel Fleischacker’s phrase (1994, 15),
she wrote: “Ethics should be seen as an ‘action-guiding code’ . . . consti-
tuted by people’s values, which are in turn nourished by their histories,
traditions, and the changes they have experienced” (Huffer 2005, 131).
According to Huffer, histories, traditions, and experience produce values;
values lead to ethics; and ethics in turn direct the “action-guiding codes”
that shape everyday behaviors. Constructing accurate interpretations of
existing ethics and codes is important for Huffer because she believes these
interpretations describe the causes of specific practices.

Huffer’s work clearly states what I suspect is a common view among
many researchers in Oceania. This view—that values and ethics produce
codes that in turn cause behaviors—may be shared as well by many lay-
people in the region. Still, I do not think it provides a master theory of
behavioral causation that researchers should embrace uncritically. Inter-
pretations about why people do what they do are probably better decided
in the field, in consultation with the people studied. 

Huffer and Qalo have also argued that Oceania’s philosophies act as
“building blocks” (2004, 107, 116). Even this less specific claim, how-
ever, seems to me to grant too much power to interpreted ideas. Building
in part on Qalo’s earlier research into the establishment of the Mucun-
abitu Iron Works Cooperative Society in Fiji (Qalo 1997), Huffer and
Qalo suggested that four values might be “common among many of us
who call ourselves Pacific Islanders.” These values are veilomani, veikau-
waitake, veivakaliuci, and veidokai, Fijian words Huffer and Qalo inter-
preted respectively as (1) a genuine concern for one another; (2) caring and
expressing concern for the well-being of others; (3) placing others ahead
of oneself; and (4) honoring, respecting, and upholding someone (2004,
108). But it seems unlikely to me that any of these four or any other inter-
pretations of Pacific values name causes of any specific behaviors. Even if
interpreters were to agree, for example, with Huffer and Qalo’s formula-
tion of veilomani as “a genuine concern for one another,” this formula-
tion does not seem to name a “building block” from which any particular
action would emerge. 

Huffer and Qalo’s interpretations of Fijian values recall interpretations
of Christianity. This now widely disseminated tradition has also promi-



42 the contemporary pacific • 18:1 (2006)

nently been claimed to be rooted in the value of “a genuine concern for
one another,” a phrase often further interpreted by Christians to mean
“love thy neighbor as thyself.” This and other supposed “core values” of
Christianity, however, have not regularly acted as building blocks for any
particular practices, no matter how or by whom the values have been
interpreted. Christian core concepts of “love” have been claimed as cause
for many horrendous as well as for many benevolent acts. It seems a mis-
take in general, I suspect, to think that philosophies, values, beliefs, ideals,
concepts, or codes are the source of particular actions. Interpretations
display culture-bound understandings of practices; they do not produce
them.

Practice-based Research

Through its focus on repetitive actions, practice-based research escapes
most problems associated with both discipline- and interpretation-based
perspectives. As mentioned, the Oceania Centre for Arts and Culture
offers one prominent illustration of this approach (Hau‘ofa 2003), but
some interest in practices has been part of most discipline- and interpre-
tation-based projects for as long as there has been formal research in
Oceania. In shifting their emphases to practices, then, most researchers
will not have to learn new methods so much as to modify the thrust of
their current and future projects. 

While interpretation-based research views abstract principles, philoso-
phies, values, beliefs and the like as causes of behaviors, a practice-based
perspective treats each interpretation as but one among many types of
practice. Practices are researched not to help answer academic questions,
as they are in discipline-based research. Nor are practices used as the basis
for formulating abstract descriptions or analyses, as they are in interpre-
tation-based approaches. Researchers who emphasize practices consider
the activities of everyday life important enough by themselves to justify
lifetimes of study. 

Hau‘ofa’s transformation from social scientist and interpreter of the
region into facilitator of practices is emblematic of the change in research
emphasis I am recommending. At the Oceania Centre for Arts and Cul-
ture, Hau‘ofa and his colleagues are not much interested in either the dis-
ciplines of art history and instruction or in formal interpretations of how
their work fits into Pacific traditions. People at the Oceania Centre instead



wood • three research perspectives for oceania 43

learn mostly through “observation and hands-on experience” (Hau‘ofa
2003, 8). In a cooperative setting, the Oceania Centre encourages “dif-
ferent kinds of music, dance, art, ceremonies, and other forms of cultural
production” (Hau‘ofa 2003, 17). “Painters, sculptors, dancers and musi-
cians interact with and help each other” in ways that recall those Oceanic
communities where the arts are a “matter of community-wide participa-
tion” (Hau‘ofa 2003, 7, 8).

Because the Oceania Centre is figuratively (and almost literally) a world
unto itself, it may not be a practical model for most aspiring practice
researchers. More typical of the practice-based approach in the region is
the research of many who self-consciously engage in commingling con-
temporary and traditional practices. Prominent examples are described in
Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s Decolonizing Methodologies (1999), which exam-
ines Mäori and other indigenous research practices; David Welchman
Gegeo’s several studies focusing on the knowledge practices of one group
of Solomon Islanders (1994, 1998; with Karen Watson-Gegeo 2001, 2002);
Manulani Aluli Meyer’s reports on Native Hawaiian epistemological prac-
tices (2001, 2003); as well as others, a few of which are discussed later in
this article. Though the range of existing research is impressive, it likely
marks but the beginning of much more practice-based work to come. 

Practices are patterned activities that can be recognized as normal and
repeatable by the people who enact them. Practice-based research thus
may focus on any practices found along a continuum from the informal
to the formal. While informal practices may seldom be discussed self-con-
sciously, formal practices often provoke analysis and debate by the people
involved in their production. Some recent research into Hawaiian burial
protocols illustrates the important work possible at the formal end of the
practice continuum. Carolyn Këhaunani Cachola-Abad and Edward Hale-
aloha Ayau have explained that caring for ancestral remains and burial
sites has become increasingly important for contemporary Hawaiians
(1999). Some view these sites and their associated objects as relics from
the past and thus valuable primarily as opportunities for learning history.
Others, however, treat these same sites and funereal objects as places of
continuing obligation where traditional burial practices should be enacted.
Through strictly following traditional protocols, it is believed “the ances-
tral foundation is strengthened, the interdependence between past and
present continues, and the land is reinfused with mana necessary to sus-
tain the ancestors, the living and the generations to come. Ola nä iwi, the



44 the contemporary pacific • 18:1 (2006)

bones live” (Nihipali 2003, b-1; see also Ayau and Tengan 2002). Prac-
tice-based researchers can assist with the enactment of rituals, protocols,
and similar formally prescribed behaviors in Hawai‘i and throughout
Oceania.

Practice-based research, however, will likely focus more often on the
more common sets of informal practices associated with different peoples
and places. Such practice-based research was extremely useful, for exam-
ple, in the construction, launching, blessing, and navigating of the voyag-
ing canoe Höküle‘a.3 In the decades since it first sailed, the Höküle‘a and
its newer companion, Hawai‘iloa, have themselves become important
research sites for further study of ocean-related practices. This and most
other practice-based research demonstrates that, while something may be
learned through creating interpretations, such “knowledge is meaningless
unless practiced” (Ayau and Tengan 2002, 185). Enacting practices, as in
caring for the dead, building canoes, and navigating the seas, offers much
to the people of Oceania, whether accompanied by interpretations or not.

Perhaps once a practice-based perspective becomes more prominent,
earlier discipline- and interpretation-based research about Oceania will be
revisited and found to be valuable in new ways. Hereniko’s Woven Gods
(1995), mentioned earlier, for example, may one day be appreciated most
for its descriptions of Rotuman clowning practices. Years from now, few
may turn to Woven Gods to learn what anthropologists once thought
about Rotumans, or to read Hereniko’s master narrative explaining Rotu-
man behavior. In the future Rotumans and others may wish to know more
about what Rotumans did in the twentieth century that distinguished
them from other humans. Then Woven Gods’ recounting of clowning
practices may provide a treasure trove of information about behaviors
that can be learned nowhere else. 

The Practice Turn

The increasing interest in practice-based research in Oceania reflects a
broader transformation that Theodore R Schatzki, Karin Knorr Cetina,
and Eike von Savigny labeled a “practice turn in contemporary theory”
(2001). Those who emphasize practices generally reject the assumption
that people live within self-organizing “systems” of beliefs, values, norms,
and symbols. As Ann Swidler wrote, practice-based perspectives conceive
of culture less “as a great stream in which we all are immersed and more



wood • three research perspectives for oceania 45

as a bag of tricks or an oddly assorted tool kit containing implements of
varying shapes that fit the hand more or less well, are not always easy to
use, and only sometimes do the job” (2001, 24).

Swidler further explained: “This image suggests that culture cultivates
skills and habits in its users, so that one can be more or less good at the
cultural repertoire one performs . . . like the pieces a musician has mas-
tered or the plays an actor has performed. It is in this sense that people
have an array of cultural resources upon which they can draw. We ask not
only what pieces are in the repertoire but why some are performed at one
time, some at another” (2001, 24–25). Different members master each
aspect of the cultural repertoire to widely varying degrees. Every culture’s
members, in addition, exhibit unstable commitments to enacting their bag
of tricks. They make diverse and often unpredictable choices about when
and how to use the oddly assorted ensemble of practices available to them.

In Oceania today, of course, cultural repertoires include many practices
introduced from continents. So, for example, in the Rotuman weddings
that Hereniko described, Western wedding practices appear side by side
with traditional ritual clowning. Similarly, Smith, Gegeo, and Meyer’s sep-
arate studies of Pacific Islander practices (mentioned earlier) demonstrate
that continental and Oceanic practices are often simultaneously available
for use. This intermingling of practices with diverse origins constitutes an
important focus for the region’s emerging practice studies.

Teresia K Teaiwa’s PhD dissertation provides one approach for research-
ing the mixed repertoire of practices that characterizes Oceania today
(2001a). Teaiwa focused on how practices may be articulated, disarticu-
lated, and rearticulated in different places throughout the region. While in
some earlier studies Teaiwa emphasized Foucauldian notions of opposi-
tion and resistance, her dissertation claims that, more often, Pacific Island-
ers throughout Oceania actively appropriate and transform old colonial-
ist practices, adding them to their repertoires in ways that make them
“their own.” Teaiwa detailed, for example, how some native hierarchical
practices based on race, caste, religion, and gender have been articulated
with Western militaristic practices to create new, Oceanic-specific cultural
ensembles. Teaiwa also explored ways that traditional Pacific Islander
practices—for example dancing and ceremonial drinking—have been
articulated with Western touristic practices to integrate the “old ways”
within new places.4

Views of practices in Oceania as articulated, disarticulated, and reartic-



46 the contemporary pacific • 18:1 (2006)

ulated highlight what Teaiwa has repeatedly referred to as the “fluid, mul-
tiple and complex” nature of Pacific cultures (see, eg, Teaiwa 2001a, 77),
a view that resonates with Swidler’s description of practice repertoires
(2001). In cultures thus conceived, no “natural” connections, no basic
beliefs, values, principles, or philosophies, and no master interpretations,
reside in any imagined “core” of a people’s way of life. Teaiwa’s articu-
lation model thus diverts the practice-based researcher’s attention away
from worries about “authenticity” to study instead how ensembles of
diverse practices get connected, disconnected, and sometimes reconnected,
through both conscious and accidental choices made by people engaged
together in specific, historical contexts. 

Thinking of people as defined by their practices also has the advantage
of making it easier to think about similarities and differences between
diasporic Oceanic groups and those who have remained nearer to their
ancestral islands. Place of residence can have greater or lesser impact on
a person’s available ensemble of practices. 

Interpretations as Practices

Because interpretation is itself a type of practice, embracing practice-based
research does not end either research-based interpretations or studies of
the interpretations of others. The practice perspective does, however, shift
the emphasis from internal meanings to embodied external activities, that
is, from conceiving of interpretations as individual and psychological to
examining them instead as performances and behaviors. For practice
researchers, interpretation is but one among many acts available within a
dynamic cultural repertoire. It is for the people themselves, and not
researchers, to decide the relative importance of interpretive and noninter-
pretive practices within each occasion of their use. Of course, researchers
are usually more skilled at producing interpretations than at enacting
many types of noninterpretive practices. Their mastery of interpretive
practices enables researchers to advance in school and in their professions.
It is a mistake, however, for researchers to assume that interpretations in
general are more important for most people than are noninterpretive prac-
tices. In some contexts, people may treat interpretations as being as con-
sequential as they seem to be in a social science or humanities seminar
room. For those same people at other times, however, noninterpretive
practices will be much more significant.



wood • three research perspectives for oceania 47

Ty Käwika Tengan’s PhD dissertation provides a useful example of one
way to apply a practice-based perspective to researching interpretations
(2003). Tengan reported on a group of approximately twenty-five to
thirty-five Native Hawaiian men, the Hale Mua, of which he is a mem-
ber. These men have been working for over a decade at redefining what
it means to be Hawaiian. Drawing on his own experiences, as well as on
formal and informal interviews, Tengan’s work offers a thick description
of the group’s evolving repertoire of interpretive and noninterpretive mas-
culinity practices. 

Tengan’s discussion of the discursive or interpretive practices performed
by the men of the Hale Mua generally uses a Hawaiian word, “mo‘olelo,”
which refers to stories, tales, myths, histories, literature, legends, narra-
tives of any length, accounts, and all coherent successions of talk (Tengan
2003, 355). Newcomers to the Hale Mua are taught several forms of
mo‘olelo practices, as well as how to recognize appropriate occasions for
producing them. Tengan’s work occasionally adopts aspects of an inter-
pretation-based perspective in explaining the meaning of these mo‘olelo,
but its principle emphasis treats mo‘olelo as embodied practices. Tengan
has detailed how the prescribed forms of mo‘olelo perform essential iden-
tity work for the men. So, for example, telling personal stories in distinct
ways at the correct moments helps transform the members from “ordi-
nary” Hawaiian-Americans into a powerful group of contemporary
Hawaiian men. As Tengan explained, speaking the appropriate mo‘olelo
at the correct times creates connections between the men and “the land,
the ancestors, and the larger Hawaiian lähui (people /nation)” (2003,
328).5

The men of Hale Mua also enact noninterpretive practices that, like
their prescribed mo‘olelo practices, help to separate them from men who
do not participate in the group. Common noninterpretive practices include
types of exercise, martial arts, sparring, dance (ha‘a, not hula), ritual,
chanting, praying, and woodcarving. For group members, these practices
manifest what it is to be a Hawaiian male. So, for example, Tengan
explained, “In the case of carving, they [the Hale Mua leaders] constantly
reiterate that we are not only making a weapon but also perpetuating
Hawaiian culture and carrying on the knowledge of our küpuna [elders].
Thus the importance lies not in what shape the wood ends up taking but
rather [in] the fact that we go through the process and in so doing make
our own mana” (2003, 230). The practices are constitutive of a living cul-



48 the contemporary pacific • 18:1 (2006)

ture, not a memorial to one that is past, or a symbolic representation of
its meaning. Through enacting the prescribed repertoire, members of Hale
Mua transform themselves into a new type of Hawaiian man. 

Tengan has shown that interpretive and noninterpretive practices work
similarly for participants. Though the Hale Mua puts a greater emphasis
on noninterpretive practices, both types are considered necessary. Some-
times the two types are enacted sequentially: members may first carve or
chant, for example, then practice mo‘olelo. Sometimes, too, interpretive
and noninterpretive practices intertwine, as during awa (kava) ceremonies,
when ritual drinking and mo‘olelo practices are performed together. At
such times, interpretive and noninterpretive practices enrich one another,
and a mingling of interpretations and embodied actions is indeed much
valued in the group. Kyle Ka‘ohulani Näkänelua, one of the leaders of the
Hale Mua, explained in his interview with Tengan: “The elders have a
language based on living what they [do], and speaking what they do. And
so fortunately my grandmother is a native speaker, and they have a whole
different way of thinking, and the language brings life to da work, and den
da work gives life to da language, and when you separate the two, you lose
something in da process” (2003, 298; emphasis in original). Näkänelua’s
comments seem to suggest that noninterpretive practices invigorate lan-
guage, mo‘olelo, and interpretations. When the latter are separated from
material practices, the cultural repertoire is dangerously weakened.

Tengan’s work shows how both the men of the Hale Mua and Tengan
himself as a researcher deploy interpretive and noninterpretive practices
as enactments of culture. Tengan has thus illustrated one way researchers
can study interpretations in Oceania without falling back on an interpre-
tation-based approach. His study is useful as well in the exemplary way it
articulates itself as an interpretive practice. Tengan’s descriptions of most
of the practices of the Hale Mua are not enactments of these practices
themselves. His writing about carving, ritual, or dancing, for example,
offers interpretations of embodied actions, but does not reproduce those
practices. His dissertation does, however, enact one Hale Mua practice:
it is a mo‘olelo, and one that Tengan hopes many in the Hale Mua will
recognize as participating in the succession of storytellings the group
encourages.

Tengan described his research mo‘olelo as “only a fragment of the story,
one that is told differently by each of the members that add their words to
it. Yet it is one that would not exist without this multiplicity of voices and



wood • three research perspectives for oceania 49

experiences, and it is in the collective telling that we make our mo‘olelo
live” (2003, 345). Other reports of practice-based research, including this
essay, can be similarly understood as performances that draw selectively
from a collectively available repertoire. Practice-based reports do things
within the communities in which they appear. So, as Tengan explained,
the draft form of his mo‘olelo research report provoked much discussion,
more mo‘olelo, within the Hale Mua. In the best of circumstances, other
practice-based reports will call forth similarly enriching responses from
the communities with which they are shared. 

Emphasizing Practices

Not all people in Oceania or elsewhere likely deploy a worldview like
that of the men of the Hale Mua, who conceive of practices much as prac-
tice-based researchers do. Still, practice-based research can be adapted
for cultural repertoires dominated by interpretations, for repertoires that
emphasize noninterpretive actions, as well as for repertoires that feature
diverse mixes of the two. 

My own choice of approach reflects a commitment to cultural diversity
and local autonomy, values other researchers may not share. My choice
also reflects my position as a settler intellectual in the nation of Hawai‘i.6

Though the examples I rely on here are primarily drawn from Pacific
Islander researchers, I hope it does not seem that I am continuing the tra-
dition whereby outsiders tell the native people of Oceania what they
should do. I emphasize research by indigenous scholars because this work
seems generally both the most exciting and the most valuable now avail-
able in the region. Restricting my examples to nonindigenous researchers
might have implied that the work of indigenous researchers is not as wor-
thy of academic study. 

I mentioned earlier that some people in Oceania continue their disci-
pline-based research in part because they believe that this discourse helps
facilitate dialogue with powerful people on continents. Practice-based
research may also increasingly encourage such dialogue, as more and more
continental analysts are beginning to accept the idea that “Culture is a
verb, not a noun, a process, not a thing in itself ” (Niezen 2003, 6). Under-
standing culture as a dynamic process encourages research into cultures
conceived of as collections of practices. Practice-based researchers in Oce-
ania will be able to talk to researchers around the world, but their conver-



50 the contemporary pacific • 18:1 (2006)

sations will center mostly on the articulation, disarticulation, and reartic-
ulation of practices, rather than on disciplinary or interpretive concerns. 

Magnificently, the human inhabitants of Oceania are not alone in enact-
ing practices here. Ancestors, spirits, gods, animals, fish, waves, winds,
plants, stars, even places, as well as many other entities, manifest their own
interpretive and noninterpretive practices. Shifting the focus of research
from disciplines and interpretations to practices may enable researchers in
the region to integrate the human and the nonhuman into single, unifying
projects. The natural and human sciences, then, would no longer work
separately, nor would researchers need to squirm when Oceania’s people
point to invisibles as palpable presences.7

Few research approaches are likely to be pure; most will likely mingle
the three perspectives described here, to greater or lesser degrees. Still,
projects tend to emphasize a single perspective, so I hope these pages
encourage researchers to better understand that the disciplinary, interpre-
tive, and practice approaches promote not merely different ways of doing
research, but different futures for Oceania as well.

Notes

1 “Identity” was first widely used in the 1960s by social scientists in capital-
ist countries as a part of their attacks on communism (Medovoi 2003); the con-
cept of “globalization” owes much to some incidental amateur photographs made
by the Apollo astronauts (Cosgrove 1994); both “indigenism” and “governance”
became common as part of a general reconceptualization of the world by elites
that took place after the collapse of the Soviet empire made their earlier binary
schemes obsolete (Niezen 2003).

2 Linda Tuhiwai Smith provided an excellent summary of much of the work,
especially by Mäori researchers (1999). See also Wood (2003) and the later dis-
cussion for references to some interpretation-based research published after
1999.

3 Information and valuable reprinted articles can be accessed from the Poly-
nesian Voyaging Society homepage at <http://www.pvs-hawaii.com/index.html>.

4 Tengan’s dissertation offers a related analysis of the articulation of Native
Hawaiian warrior and sports practices into colonial figurations of masculinity
(2003; see especially pages 64–79).

5 Geoffrey M White provided general descriptions of the importance of inter-
pretive practices in enacting identities in Oceania (1991, 2000). Kame‘eleihiwa



wood • three research perspectives for oceania 51

(1992), Osorio (2002), Silva (2004), and Kanalu G Terry Young (1998) have also
detailed ways that Hawaiians use mo‘olelo in producing their culture.

6 J Këhaulani Kauanui has provided a useful overview of the relationship
between the United States and the sovereign nation of Hawai‘i (2005).

7 Suggestions about how researchers can integrate research into the human
and nonhuman can be found in the writings of Hau‘ofa (eg, 1993, 2000), of
course, as well as in work by continental thinkers such as Bruno Latour (1993,
1999) and Donna Haraway (1991). Also see the suggestions contained in several
of the essays about “spirits” in Oceania in Jeannette Marie Mageo and Alan
Howard’s 1996 volume on that topic.

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wood • three research perspectives for oceania 55

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Abstract

Three research perspectives are currently competing in Oceania. A discipline-
based perspective still dominates, though ever fewer people believe that disciplines
produce superior forms of knowledge. An alternative, interpretation-based per-
spective is becoming more prominent, but this approach relies on confusing and
contradictory claims about how interpretations connect to concrete activities. A
practice-based approach seems better able to promote diversity and place-based
autonomies in Oceania. Research that focuses on practices avoids the universal-
izing claims of discipline-based research. By treating cultures as dynamic reper-
toires of practices, a practice-based approach integrates interpretive and noninter-
pretive activities within a single research frame. Examples from many researchers,
including Epeli Hau‘ofa and Ty Käwika Tengan, illustrate the benefits of a prac-
tice-based approach. 

keywords: disciplines, Oceania, Pacific studies, practices, research