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Displaying results 71 to 80 of 84.

Telling Pacific Lives »

Prisms of Process

Edited by: Brij V. Lal, Vicki Luker
Publication date: June 2008
How are Pacific lives imagined, written and read? How are they refracted through prisms of process? From legends about culture heroes to biographies of national leaders, from tales of ancestors to stories of contemporary men and women, from lives told of both the famous and the nameless, this collection of essays — by historians and anthropologists, Islanders and Island scholars — probes questions of personhood, identity, memory, and time across the sweep of the Pacific, as well as practical issues of research and writing.

Political Parties in the Pacific Islands »

Edited by: Roland Rich, Luke Hambly, Michael G. Morgan
Publication date: April 2008
While political parties remain an indispensable institutional framework for representation and governance in a democracy, the democracies of many Pacific Islands nations are undermined by the weakness and inefficacy of their local political parties. Addressing the implications of the lack of established party systems across the Pacific, this collection seeks to illuminate the underlying assumptions and suppositions behind the importance of coherent and effective parties to overall democratic functioning. Focusing on the political systems of East Timor, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji and Samoa, the coherent structure of the volume makes it consistently useful as both an articulate analytical text and a reference tool concerning the political composition, history and direction of Pacific states. Featuring contributions from scholars who are familiar names to even the most casual of Pacificists, Political Parties in the Pacific is the benchmark reference work on the political parties of the Pacific: an invaluable resource for students, scholars and researchers of the Pacific and international politics.

Capturing Wealth from Tuna »

Case Studies from the Pacific

Authored by: Kate Barclay, Ian Cartwright
Publication date: January 2008
The Western and Central Pacific Ocean is home to the largest tuna fishery in the world – around half of the world’s tuna supply – and is a vital economic resource for Pacific island countries. The potential of the Pacific tuna fishery to contribute to economic development in the Pacific island countries is enormous, but will require a cooperative regional strategy to maximise access fees from distant water fishing nations, as well as targeted domestic policy and legislation to encourage local fishing industries. Together with the importance of acting strategically with regard to such a variable resource, the lesson of fisheries management globally is that it is most effective when it takes into consideration social, cultural and political contexts. Based on an extensive study of six Pacific island states, Capturing Wealth from Tuna maps out the aspirations and limitations of six Pacific island countries and proposes strategies for capturing more wealth from this resource in a sustainable and socially equitable manner.

Conflict and Resource Development in the Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea »

Edited by: Nicole Haley, R.J. May
Publication date: November 2007
The Southern Highlands is one of Papua New Guinea’s most resource-rich provinces, but for a number of years the province has been riven by conflict. Longstanding inter-group rivalries, briefly set aside during the colonial period, have been compounded by competition for the benefits provided by the modern state and by fighting over the distribution of returns from the several big mining and petroleum projects located within the province or impinging upon it. Deaths from the various conflicts over the past decade number in the hundreds. As a result of inter-group fighting, criminal activity and vandalism, a number of businesses have withdrawn from the province. Roadblocks and ambushes have made travel dangerous in many parts and expatriate missionaries and aid workers have left. Many public servants have abandoned their posts with the result that state services are not provided. Corruption is rife. Police are often reluctant to act because they are outnumbered and outgunned. This volume brings together a number of authors with deep experience of the Southern Highlands to examine the underlying dynamics of resource development and conflict in the province. Its primary purpose is to provide some background to recent events, but the authors also explore possible approaches to limiting the human and economic costs of the ongoing conflict and breakdown of governance.

Customary Land Tenure & Registration in Australia and Papua New Guinea »

Anthropological Perspectives

Edited by: James Weiner, Katie Glaskin
Publication date: June 2007
The main theme of this volume is a discussion of the ways in which legal mechanisms, such as the Land Groups Incorporation Act (1974) in PNG, and the Native Title Act (1993) in Australia, do not, as they purport, serve merely to identify and register already-existing customary indigenous landowning groups in these countries. Because the legislation is an integral part of the way in which indigenous people are defined and managed in relation to the State, it serves to elicit particular responses in landowner organisation and self-identification on the part of indigenous people. These pieces of legislation actively contour the progressive evolution of landowner social, territorial and political organisation at all levels in these nation states. The contributors to this volume provide in-depth anthropological case studies of social structural and cultural transformations engendered by the confrontation between states, developers and indigenous communities over rights to customarily owned land.

Agenda - A Journal of Policy Analysis and Reform: Volume 11, Number 1, 2004 »

Publication date: April 2007
Agenda is a refereed, ECONLIT-indexed and RePEc-listed journal of the College of Business and Economics, The Australian National University. Launched in 1994, Agenda provides a forum for debate on public policy, mainly (but not exclusively) in Australia and New Zealand. It deals largely with economic issues but gives space to social and legal policy and also to the moral and philosophical foundations and implications of policy. Subscribe to the Agenda Alerting service if you wish to be advised on forthcoming or new issues.
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Globalisation and Governance in the Pacific Islands »

State, Society and Governance in Melanesia

Edited by: Stewart Firth
Publication date: December 2006
The Pacific Islands are feeling the effects of globalisation. Free trade in sugar and garments is threatening two of Fiji’s key industries. At the same time other opportunities are emerging. Labour migration is growing in importance, and Pacific governments are calling for more access to Australia’s labour market. Fiji has joined Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu and Kiribati as a remittance economy, with thousands of its citizens working overseas. Meantime, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands grapple with an older kind of globalisation in which overseas companies exploit mineral and forest resources. The Pacific Islands confront unique problems of governance in this era of globalisation. The modern, democratic state often fits awkwardly with traditional ways of doing politics in that part of the world. Just as often, politicians in the Pacific exploit tradition or invent it to serve modern political purposes. The contributors to this volume examine Pacific globalisation and governance from a wide range of perspectives. They come from Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Hawai’i, the Federated States of Micronesia, Samoa, Fiji, New Zealand and Jamaica as well as Australia.

The Austronesians »

Historical and Comparative Perspectives

Publication date: September 2006
The Austronesian-speaking population of the world are estimated to number more than 270 million people, living in a broad swathe around half the globe, from Madagascar to Easter Island and from Taiwan to New Zealand. The seventeen papers in this volume provide a general survey of these diverse populations focusing on their common origins and historical transformations. The papers examine current ideas on the linguistics, prehistory, anthropology and recorded history of the Austronesians. This volume is a publication of the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies’ Comparative Austronesian Project.

Inside Austronesian Houses »

Perspectives on domestic designs for living

Edited by: James J. Fox
Publication date: September 2006
The eight papers in this volume examine the spatial organization of a variety of Austronesian houses and relate the domestic design of these houses to the social and ritual practices of the specific groups who reside within them. The houses considered in this volume range from longhouses in Borneo to the meeting-houses of the Maori of New Zealand and from the magnificent houses of the Minangkabau of Sumatra to the simpler dwellings of the population of Goodenough Island in Papua New Guinea. Together these papers indicate common features of domestic design from island South-East Asia to Melanesia and the Pacific. This volume is a publication of the Research School of Pacific Studies’ Comparative Austronesian Project.

The Poetic Power of Place »

Comparative Perspectives on Austronesian Ideas of Locality

Edited by: James J. Fox
Publication date: September 2006
This collection of papers is the fourth in a series of volumes on the work of the Comparative Austronesian Project. Each paper describes a specific Austronesian locality and offers an ethnographic account of the way in which social knowledge is vested, maintained and transformed in a particular landscape. The intention of the volume is to consider common patterns in the representation of place among Austronesian-speaking populations.