Kelly, Susanna Katharine; (2001) Unwrapping Mats: People, Land and Material Culture in Tongoa, Central Vanuatu. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

This thesis examines the phenomenon of the pandanus mat in central Vanuatu. The pandanus mat is a ubiquitous object, appearing in all arenas of life on Tongoa and has remained a crucial item of material culture throughout the political and economic changes of the last one hundred and fifty years. Unlike other items of material culture such as barkcloth which was rapidly displaced by calico in the nineteeth century, the pandanus mat has continued to be essential. The thesis addresses the problem of why this should be so: what is it that mats 'say and do' that cannot be said and done by any other material object? The thesis argues that the reason mats have continued to be absolutely necessary is because mats are fundamentally connected to the system of chiefly titles and land relations on Tongoa. Issues of land and land alienation assumed critical significance in the colonial and post-colonial period and this forms a background to contemporary concerns with land. Realising the significance of land issues is necessary for an understanding of the importance of pies ('place'; this Bislama word fuses notions of territory and identity) and the fundamental attachment of person to place in Vanuatu. This thesis argues that mats are a material expression of the attachment and detachment of persons to place on Tongoa and, furthermore, effect this attachment and detachment. The material, technical and social specifications of the Tongoa mat act upon the various contexts in which it appears and effect a social and spatial organisation of place. Despite its centrality within daily practices and ceremonial contexts, however, the Tongoan mat is relatively unelaborated both physically and metaphysically. Individual mats do not acquire 'biographies' or histories that accompany them through exchanges and ceremonial use. Because mats are not individuated in this way, it is their material identity rather than their individual identity that is important. The thesis explores this problem, drawing upon recent developments in the field of material culture studies to examine the production and transformations of the Tongoa mat in use. Examining the technical processes and social relations of production that bring this material form into being allows an examination of how the mat is so thoroughly implicated within other Tongoan cultural processes; namely, the reproduction of people and their relations to place.

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