Abstract

Education promises social mobility, yet expanding access to education rarely changes relations of relative inequality because new opportunities tend to be monopolized by the most privileged classes in society. Since the end of the so-called “Ethnic Tensions” of 1998-2003 in Solomon Islands, access to basic education has increased, in part through the establishment of many rural community high schools. Drawing on exploratory research on education in Ranongga Island, I discuss rural people’s perceptions of their own disadvantage relative to urban elites and middle classes. I also consider widespread enthusiasm for an alternative form of education in the Kulu Language Institute, which has grown over fifteen years from a series of workshops on vernacular grammar into a fully-fledged language institute that offers regular courses in vernacular grammar (on Ranongga) and English and Biblical languages (in Honiara) to students ranging from primary school dropouts to university graduates. These grammar courses seem to effectively combat a sense of inadequacy and failure that many rural people feel when they contemplate their formal educational achievements and position in the emerging class system of Solomon Islands.
 
Biography

Debra McDougall is a Senior Lecturer in Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Western Australia. She is the author of Engaging with Strangers: Love and Violence in the Rural Solomon Islands (Berghahn Books, 2016), which is based long-term ethnographic research on the island of Ranongga in the western Solomon Islands. She also co-edited Christian Politics in Oceania (Berghahn Books, 2013) with Matt Tomlinson.She is planning a new research project focused on rural mobility, socio-economic inequality, and education in Melanesia. 
 

S2 2016 Series Speakers
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Date            Speaker
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Jul 27          Jane Ferguson
Aug 3          Alison Witchard
Aug 10        Hans Baer
Aug 17        Simone Dennis
Aug 24        Debra McDougall
Fri Aug 26  Michael Hertzfeld
Aug 31        Robbie Peters
Sep 21         Avail
Oct 5           Avail
Oct 12         Bonnie McConnell
Oct 19         Francesca Merlan
Oct 26         Avail
Nov 2          Heidi Sinevaara-Niskanen

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