Thomas Mountjoy
forsker
Institutt for sosialantropologi
Hjemmeside: http://pacific.uib.no/
Stilling: forsker
Telefon: 55 58 92 76
E-post: Thomas.Mountjoy@sosantr.uib.no
Besøksadresse: Fosswinckelsgt. 6
Postadresse: Fosswinckelsgt. 6
PhD Fellowship 2009-2011
Sport and Nation in Modern Melanesia: The Case of Football in Solomon Islands
Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands is the base for my doctoral fieldwork, alongside the western province, looking at a range of objectives relating to the capacity sport and related areas of activity have for producing social change and instigating new forms of civil and national solidarity. This can more closely be defined as socio-historical project that looks at how groups and individuals are entwined in relationships shaped by the flow of people, cultures and practices in everyday Melanesian life. Sport is seen to become reoriented to suit the needs and complexities of the local society, thus becoming essential and significant to these groups in ways that suit anthropological enquiry.
Regional: History, sporting practice, national level, western Solomon Islands, village sports
Thematic:
Nationalism, phenomenology of sporting experience, knowledge transfer, sport ethnography
Ongoing:
Pacific Alternatives:
Cultural Heritage and Political Innovation in Oceania
Bergen Pacific Studies research group
The concepts of cultural heritage and political innovation will serve as an analytical platform for understanding social developments in the Pacific with a view to providing more general insights into important global processes, as nation states world-wide are weakened and challenged from local and global agents. Together these concepts stand for the creative forms of ’Pacific Alternatives’ that our experienced group of collaborating scholars aim to grasp, analyze and theorize. A major underlying assumption of our project is that global generalisations are possible on the basis of carefully selected case studies of cultural heritage and political innovation in the Pacific region.