Managing Modernity In The Western Pacific

Fast money schemes in Papua New Guinea, collectivities in rural Solomon Islands, gambling in the Cook Islands, and the Vanuatu tax haven—all feature in the interface between Pacific and global economies. Since the 1970s, Melanesian countries and their peoples have been beguiled by the prospect of economic development that would enable them to participate in a world market economic system. Access to global markets would provide the means to improve their standard of living, allowing them to take their places as independent nations in a modern world. Managing Modernity in the Western Pacific takes a broad sweep through contemporary topics in Melanesian anthropology and ethnography. With nuanced and rigorous scholarship, it views contemporary debate on modernity in Melanesia within the context of the global economy and cultural capitalism. In particular, contributors assess local ideas about wealth, success, speculation, and development and their connections to participation in institutions and activities generated by them. This innovative and accessible collection offers a new intersection between Western Pacific anthropology and global studies.

Fast money schemes in Papua New Guinea, collectivities in rural Solomon Islands, gambling in the Cook Islands, and the Vanuatu tax haven—all feature in the interface between Pacific and global economies. Since the 1970s, Melanesian countries and their peoples have been beguiled by the prospect of economic development that would enable them to participate in a world market economic system. Access to global markets would provide the means to improve their standard of living, allowing them to take their places as independent nations in a modern world. Managing Modernity in the Western Pacific takes a broad sweep through contemporary topics in Melanesian anthropology and ethnography. With nuanced and rigorous scholarship, it views contemporary debate on modernity in Melanesia within the context of the global economy and cultural capitalism. In particular, contributors assess local ideas about wealth, success, speculation, and development and their connections to participation in institutions and activities generated by them. This innovative and accessible collection offers a new intersection between Western Pacific anthropology and global studies.

This wide-ranging volume captures the diverse range of societies and experiences that form what has come to be known as Melanesia. It covers prehistoric, historic and contemporary issues, and includes work by art historians, political scientists, geographers and anthropologists. The chapters range from studies of subsistence, ritual and ceremonial exchange to accounts of state violence, new media and climate change. The ‘Melanesian world’ assembled here raises questions that cut to the heart of debates in the human sciences today, with profound implications for the ways in which scholars across disciplines can describe and understand human difference. This impressive collection of essays represents a valuable resource for scholars and students alike.

Tourism is vital to the economies of most Pacific nations and as such is an important site for the meaningful production of shared and disputed cultural values and practices. This is especially the case when tourism intersects with other important arenas for cultural production, both directly and indirectly. Touring Pacific Cultures captures the central importance of tourism to the visual, material and performed cultures of the Pacific region. In this volume, we propose to explore new directions in understanding how culture is defined, produced, experienced and sustained through tourism-related practices across that region. We ask, how is cultural value, ownership, performance and commodification negotiated and experienced in actual lived practice as it moves with people across the Pacific? ‘This collection is a welcome addition to tourism studies, or perhaps we should say post- or para-tourism. The essays bring out many facets and experiences too quickly bundled under a single label and focused exclusively on “destinations” visited by “outsiders”. Tourism, we see here, actively involves many different populations, societies, and economies, a range of local/global/regional engagements that can be both destructive and creative. Western outsiders aren’t the only ones on the move. Unequal power, (neo)colonial exploitation and capitalist commodification are very much part of the picture. But so are desire, adventure, pleasure, cultural reinvention and economic development. The effect, overall, is an attitude of alert, critical ambivalence with respect to a proliferating historical phenomenon. A bumpy and rewarding ride.’ — James Clifford, Professor Emeritus, University of California, Santa Cruz

An ethnographic exploration of the rise of new forms of leadership at community and national levels with islanders are synthesising traditional and Western models.

For so long figured in European discourses as the antithesis of modernity, the Pacific Islands have remained all but absent from the modernist studies’ critical map. Yet, as the chapters of New Oceania: Modernisms and Modernities in the Pacific collectively show, Pacific artists and writers have been as creatively engaged in the construction and representation of modernity as any of their global counterparts. In the second half of the twentieth century, driving a still ongoing process of decolonisation, Pacific Islanders forged an extraordinary cultural and artistic movement. Integrating Indigenous aesthetics, forms, and techniques with a range of other influences — realist novels, avant-garde poetry, anti-colonial discourse, biblical verse, Indian mythology, American television, Bollywood film — Pacific artists developed new creative registers to express the complexity of the region’s transnational modernities. New Oceania presents the first sustained account of the modernist dimensions of this period, while presenting timely reflections on the ideological and methodological limitations of the global modernism rubric. Breaking new critical ground, it brings together scholars from a range of backgrounds to demonstrate the relevance of modernism for Pacific scholars, and the relevance of Pacific literature for modernist scholars.

For nearly fifty years, US government officials have identified Belau, in western Micronesia, as a key strategic site and have implemented administrative policies designed to maintain permanent access to Belau's land, reefs and waters for military purposes. Elder women placed themselves at the forefront of opposition to these policies, and, as part of oppositional efforts, successfully entered international political arenas. Speaking to Power moves beyond examining the impact of militarism and colonial administrative policy in Belau and draws on feminist poststructural analysis to explore the fluidity of contests in constructions of "gender," "politics," and "tradition" during US administration in Belau.