26 Jun 2025 - 27 Jun 2025  |  Diego Muñoz & Nicola Manghi

Sovereignty and decolonization across Oceania – Ethnographic perspectives and geopolitical scenarios

Sovereignty is a primary concern for the peoples of Oceania. While some have never achieved self-determination and are still engaged in anti-colonial struggles, others now face the existential challenge of global warming or the risk of losing degrees of independence to a new wave of neo-colonial expansion and the realignment of imperial dynamics. This makes the region a unique vantage point from which one can observe the nuances and transformations of sovereignty and its exercise. Firstly, Oceania has a wide range of institutional arrangements, including independent states (e.g. Tonga, Samoa, Fiji); settler states (Aotearoa/New Zealand, Australia); states in ‘free association’ (e.g. Cook Islands, Niue, Federated States of Micronesia); territories in the process of decolonization through the granting of varying degrees of ‘internal autonomy’ (e.g. French Polynesia and New Caledonia); annexed territories (e.g. Rapa Nui); and ‘unincorporated territories’ (e.g. Guam). Secondly, throughout Oceania, sovereignty faces unprecedented environmental, cultural, legal and geopolitical challenges (e.g. the ‘disappearing states’ of Tuvalu and Kiribati, the application of Indigenous peoples’ rights, as well as neo-imperial dynamics, such as those persisting between the U.S.A., China and the Micronesian countries). Thirdly, the region demonstrates the importance of a political-economic gaze: the relevance of Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs), fisheries management, Indigenous protection of marine areas and traditional lands, as well as the participation of Oceania delegations in international forums (e.g. UN, Pacific Islands Forum) highlights the need to consider sovereignty beyond a normative lens. How can insights from Oceania help us to reconceptualize sovereignty? What does it mean to be sovereign–or not? How are ‘traditional’ powers legitimized within the legal-rational framework of the state, and how are these arrangements changing in current geopolitical and environmental contexts? In addressing these questions, this panel aims to gather both ethnographic and theoretical insights into issues of sovereignty and decolonization across the region.

The 14th Conference of the European Society for Oceanists "Connections Within and Beyond Oceania" is hosted by the University of Lucerne, 24 - 27 June 2025.
Register here and visit the conference website for more information.