Elisabetta Gnecchi-Ruscone
Elisabetta Gnecchi-Ruscone teaches Societies and Cultures of the Pacific at the University of Milano-Bicocca and consults for ethnographic museums; she holds a PhD from The Australian National University, and her site of fieldwork is Tufi (Papua New Guinea).
Tides of Innovation in Oceania »
Value, materiality and place
Edited by: Elisabetta Gnecchi-Ruscone, Anna Paini
Publication date: April 2017
Tides of Innovation in Oceania is directly inspired by Epeli Hau‘ofa’s vision of the Pacific as a ‘Sea of Islands’; the image of tides recalls the cyclical movement of waves, with its unpredictable consequences. The authors propose tides of innovation as a fluid concept, unbound and open to many directions. This perspective is explored through ethnographic case studies centred on deeply elaborated analyses of locally inflected agencies involved in different transforming contexts. Three interwoven themes—value, materiality and place—provide a common thread.