Concrete Time: Material Temporalities and Contemporary Mobilities in the Vernacular Architecture of Northern Vanuatu, Melanesia

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn the Melanesian archipelago of Vanuatu, the development of the Recognised Seasonal Employers schemes signed with New Zealand and Australia has recently increased people’s mobilities. While, previously, migrations occurred mainly between rural islands and the archipelago’s urban centres, Ni-Vanuatu people now frequently spend several months of the year working abroad. On the other hand, asserting a continuous presence on one’s land is also crucial in terms of social and spatial senses of belonging. On some rural islands, like Mere Lava in the northern part of the archipelago, this is largely negotiated through architecture. Material and social investments concerning place are then a matter of choice as much as of the resources available to people: should they invest in semi-permanent concrete and corrugated iron houses or rather rely upon local materials and customary technical processes? These questions are entangled with complex ideological understandings of the different buildings and grounded in the socio-histories of the places concerned. This paper explores these issues through a comparative analysis of various choices made by people with respect to both imported and local materials such as concrete, leaves, vines and wood. The aim is to contribute to an analysis of the role of vernacular architecture in the way people deal with the multiple and sometimes conflicting temporalities of contemporary lives and mobilities in Vanuatu.