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Tides of Innovation in Oceania »
Value, materiality and place
Edited by: Elisabetta Gnecchi-Ruscone, Anna Paini
Publication date: April 2017
Tides of Innovation in Oceania is directly inspired by Epeli Hau‘ofa’s vision of the Pacific as a ‘Sea of Islands’; the image of tides recalls the cyclical movement of waves, with its unpredictable consequences. The authors propose tides of innovation as a fluid concept, unbound and open to many directions. This perspective is explored through ethnographic case studies centred on deeply elaborated analyses of locally inflected agencies involved in different…
Touring Pacific Cultures »
Edited by: Kalissa Alexeyeff, John Taylor
Publication date: December 2016
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…
Gender Violence & Human Rights »
Seeking Justice in Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu
Publication date: December 2016
The postcolonial states of Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu operate today in a global arena in which human rights are widely accepted. As ratifiers of UN treaties such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, these Pacific Island countries have committed to promoting women’s and girls’ rights, including the right to a life free of violence. Yet local, national and regional gender…
The Fijian Colonial Experience »
A study of the neotraditional order under British colonial rule prior to World War II
Authored by: Timothy J. Macnaught
Publication date: June 2016
Indigenous Fijians were singularly fortunate in having a colonial administration that halted the alienation of communally owned land to foreign settlers and that, almost for a century, administered their affairs in their own language and through culturally congenial authority structures and institutions. From the outset, the Fijian Administration was criticised as paternalistic and stifling of individualism. But for all its problems it sustained, at least until World War II, a…
New Mana »
Transformations of a Classic Concept in Pacific Languages and Cultures
Edited by: Matt Tomlinson, Ty P. Kāwika Tengan
Publication date: April 2016
‘Mana’, a term denoting spiritual power, is found in many Pacific Islands languages. In recent decades, the term has been taken up in New Age movements and online fantasy gaming. In this book, 16 contributors examine mana through ethnographic, linguistic, and historical lenses to understand its transformations in past and present. The authors consider a range of contexts including Indigenous sovereignty movements, Christian missions and Bible…
The people have spoken »
The 2014 elections in Fiji
Edited by: Steven Ratuva, Stephanie Lawson
Publication date: March 2016
The September 2014 elections in Fiji was one of the most anticipated in the history of the country, coming after eight years of military rule and under a radically new constitution that introduced a system of proportional representative (PR) and without any reserved communal seats. The election was won overwhelmingly by FijiFirst, a party formed by 2006 coup leader Frank Bainimarama. He subsequently embarked on a process of shifting the political…
Confronting Fiji Futures »
Edited by: A. Haroon Akram-Lodhi
Publication date: January 2016
Fiji, post-independence, has seen several governments, two military coups and, amidst sweeping social, economic and political changes, the presence of divisive identity politics in its journey towards a united, collective Fiji community.
This republished edition of Confronting Fiji Futures takes in these landmark events and eventualities, and aims at a forward-looking assessment of the realities facing Fiji in the present and the future. It focuses on the period of the…
The New Pacific Diplomacy »
Edited by: Greg Fry, Sandra Tarte
Publication date: December 2015
Since 2009 there has been a fundamental shift in the way that the Pacific Island states engage with regional and world politics. The region has experienced, what Kiribati President Anote Tong has aptly called, a ‘paradigm shift’ in ideas about how Pacific diplomacy should be organised, and on what principles it should operate. Many leaders have called for a heightened Pacific voice in global affairs and a new commitment to establishing Pacific Island control of this…
A Mission Divided »
Race, Culture and Colonialism in Fiji’s Methodist Mission
Authored by: Dr Kirstie Close-Barry
Publication date: December 2015
This book provides insight into the long process of decolonisation within the Methodist Overseas Missions of Australasia, a colonial institution that operated in the British colony of Fiji. The mission was a site of work for Europeans, Fijians and Indo-Fijians, but each community operated separately, as the mission was divided along ethnic lines in 1901. This book outlines the colonial concepts of race and culture, as well as antagonism over land and labour, that were used…
Political Life Writing in the Pacific »
Reflections on Practice
Edited by: Jack Corbett, Brij V. Lal
Publication date: July 2015
This book aims to reflect on the experiential side of writing political lives in the Pacific region. The collection touches on aspects of the life writing art that are particularly pertinent to political figures: public perception and ideology; identifying important political successes and policy initiatives; grappling with issues like corruption and age-old political science questions about leadership and ‘dirty hands’. These are general themes but they take on a particular…