大学共同利用機関法人 人間文化研究機構　国立民族学博物館

Major Objectives (Extract of Application 5-1 Objectives)

Since the end of the Cold War, ethnic conflicts have been increasing in the Third World. Recent years have seen a change in the appearance of a new type of conflict, namely, the low-intensity conflict. At the same time, in the broad sense anthropological research concerning conflicts has increased along with interest in such applied research, as scholars attempt to construct theories and analyze examples from new perspectives, such as human security and peace-building. This research intends, based on such theoretical research, to compare ethnographic research on conflicts from the standpoint of regional research on Oceania. In particular, where Oceania is concerned, following a period of political stability in the wake of the political struggle of the colonial period, since the second half of the 1990s, we have witnessed the eruption of various political problems, escalating from violence and ethnic conflict to the level of coup d’états. Research has been inadequate concerning how to understand the various problems related to political instability in Oceania, indeed even how to describe and analyze the problems from an integrated standpoint. In this research, we take these various problems as conflicts in the broad sense, and consider the conflicts and their management as well as the restoration of normal conditions in the manner of comparative ethnographic investigation to review from a comprehensive standpoint. At the same time our objective will also be to devise new ethnographic proposals concerning conflict that will incorporate the viewpoint of the relationship between the describing side and the society being described.