Threading Many Needles: Ins and Outs of Anthropological Research in Pre-Independence Vanuatu

In this paper I explain the circumstances surrounding research I conducted in the Pacific nation of Vanuatu in the late 1970s, or the New Hebrides/Les Nouvelles Hébrides as it was known at the time.¹ On applying for an extension of my permit to remain in the New Hebridean community in which I had been living for much of 1978, I was asked to adhere to the limit agreed on prior to my arrival, and to leave within a few days. My reasons for writing about this now are several. For one, it has become more acceptable in the anthropology of