I denne artikkelen bruker vi «koronaåret» 2020 og hytteforbudet som empirisk inntak for å forstå mer generelle trekk ved norske forståelser av sted, tilhørighet og sosiale skillelinjer. Vi tar utgangspunkt i den økende bruken av hjemmekontor på hytta i forbindelse med korona-pandemien og spør hvorvidt fristilling i forhold til lokalitet kan skape nye sosiale forskjeller -og hvordan disse forholder seg til mer klassiske konflikter knyttet til klasse, stedstilhørighet og by og land. Artikkelen er basert på to ulike feltarbeid i norske hyttedistrikt.

During a Christian revival movement on Ahamb Island in Vanuatu in 2014, gender-and agebased hierarchies were inverted as women and children were given divine authority and men were positioned as threats to sociopolitical renewal. In analysing these events, I develop Kapferer's insights on the inherent openness and unpredictability of ritual dynamics.However, I argue that such openness and unpredictability can also be tied to external factors including participants' multiple and sometimes incompatible values and interests. Attempts to resolve ambiguities in ritual may eventually feed back into ritual ideology and practice in ways that make participants' experiences disturbing and problematic rather than orderly and supportive.

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This article examines some paradoxical intersections of fear, security, and morality on Ahamb Island in Vanuatu in the South Pacific. I take as my ethnographic vantage point a child-led Christian revival movement that developed in the wake of enduring political conflicts on Ahamb during my fieldwork in 2014. The revival began as a process of moral renewal and turned into a security measure protecting the island against sorcerers found to be responsible for many of the island society’s problems. In the article, I make comparisons between the situation on Ahamb and the recent political and cultural crisis in the UK and USA where an increasing number of people perceive their moral order to be under threat. In both contexts, new charismatic actors of governance emerge and gain a following by identifying an ‘other’ as responsible for the crisis while convincingly presenting themselves as the solution. An important reason for these actors’ appeal, I argue, is that they appear to take people’s concerns seriously in a way that established authorities do not. However, in both Vanuatu, the UK, and the USA there is a paradox in how the actors present themselves as holding the solution to people’s insecurities while at the same time shaping the context for their emergence.

This paper examines how the new material value of land in postcolonial Vanuatu intensifies people's shaping and re‐shaping of claims to autonomy and dependence. Ahamb, like many other villages in Melanesia, originated as a mission community with people moving in from various original homelands. The mix of people from different places facilitated new kinship bonds and senses of community. However, it has also sparked disputes over land rights and leadership, fuelled by the postcolonial government's incentives for converting customary land into registered titles and leases for wealthy investors. The possibility of leasing out land, and preventing others from leasing out land, creates a dynamic where groups increasingly define themselves in terms of landowner clans that exclude outsiders rather than the wider kin networks that include them. Redefinitions of social boundaries generate secondary disputes over dependence and autonomy where care of kin, Christian commitment and future aspirations sometimes prove to be incompatible and in need of negotiation.