A History of ASAO Sessions: Formats and Topics

Abstract

This paper provides a history of the organization from its earliest beginnings in the late 1960s as the Association for Social Anthropology in Eastern Oceania (inclusive of Polynesia and Micronesia), and its incorporation of Melanesian societies in the early 1970s, until 2017. Relying on ASAO Newsletters, we compiled a database of some 700 conference sessions from 1967 through 2017. Drawing on this as well as on the recollections of surviving founders of the organization and long-term members who were involved in the shaping of ASAO’s policies over the years, we analyze the rationales behind the evolution of procedural formats for processing papers from informal sessions, working sessions, and formal symposia to publishable volumes.