Falafala Ana Ano I Kwara Ae

In this autobiographical account of life in Honiara, capital of Solomon Islands, Michael Kwa'ioloa reflects on the challenges of raising a family in town, managing marriage exchanges, and sustaining ties with a distant rural homeland in Malaita island. He also participates in a long tradition of political activism by community leaders or chiefs, whose role was severely tested by the violent conflict between Malaitans and the indigenous Guadalcanal people at the turn of the century. Kwa'ioloa provides a local perspective on the causes and course of this unhappy episode in his country's history.

The destruction of local identity through the relentless encroachment of a 'McDonald-ized' cultural imperialism is a global phenomenon. Yet the reactions of Pacific peoples to this Western hegemony are diverse and encourage the creation of independent cultural identities through sports and games, political mediations, tourism, media and filmmaking, and the struggles for land rights and titles, particularly in Australia.This book, based on extensive fieldwork, addresses a subject of great immediacy to peoples of the Pacific Island nations. It fills an important gap in existing ethnographic literature on the region and confidently navigates what had previously been considered uncharted, even unchartable, waters -- that wide sea between the classic ethnography of Oceania and contemporary anthropology's theoretical concerns with global relations and transnational cultures. Its breadth, rigour, and timely contribution to post-colonial politics in Oceania are certain to ensure that this book will provide an enduring contribution to the field.

Michael Kwaioloa grew up in the forested homeland of his ancestors on the Pacific island of Malaita and discovered the wider world by moving to the town on Honiara, capital of Solomon Islands. Living Tradition is the story of how his life changed as he came to terms with a world of contrasting cultures and values, combining family instruction and school, ancestral ghosts and born-again Christianity, shell money exchanges and work for cash, restitution of wrongs and government law. Living Tradition is a work of collaboration between Michael Kwaioloa and Ben Burt, an anthropologist who has been researching the culture and history of Kwaraae since 1979. It presents social and cultural change from the personal perspective of autobiography, edited and interpreted with the benefit of academic research. Kwaioloa's theme is the importance of his traditional culture in providing an essential but ambivalent foundation for life in changing times. He presents a lively personal account of how Kwaraae tradition is lived even as it is transformed in confrontation with Christianity and European culture; a vivid illustration of life in the contemporary Pacific Islands.

This book provides a rigorous and cross-disciplinary analysis of this Melanesian nation at a critical juncture in its post-colonial and post-conflict history, with contributions from leading scholars of Solomon Islands. The notion of ‘transition’ as used to describe the recent drawdown of the decade-long Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) provides a departure point for considering other transformations – social, political and economic –under way in the archipelagic nation. Organised around a central tension between change and continuity, two of the book’s key themes are the contested narratives of changing state–society relations and the changing social relations around land and natural resources engendered by ongoing processes of globalisation and urbanisation. Drawing heuristically on RAMSI’s genesis in the ‘state- building moment’ that dominated international relations during the first decade of this century, the book also examines the critical distinction between ‘state-building’ and ‘state formation’ in the Solomon Islands context. It engages with global scholarly and policy debates on issues such as peacebuilding, state-building, legal pluralism, hybrid governance, globalisation, urbanisation and the governance of natural resources. These themes resonate well beyond Solomon Islands and Melanesia, and the book will be of interest to a wide range of students, scholars and development practitioners. This book was previously published as a special issue of The Journal of Pacific History.

The Museum of Mankind was an innovative and popular showcase for minority cultures from around the non-Western world from 1970 to 1997. This memoir is a critical appreciation of its achievements in the various roles of a national museum, of the personalities of its staff and of the issues raised in the representation of exotic cultures. Issues of changing museum theory and practice are raised in a detailed case-study that also focuses on the social life of the museum community. This is the first history of a remarkable museum and a memorable interlude in the long history of one of the world’s oldest and greatest museums. Although not presented as an academic study, it should be useful for museum and cultural studies as a well as a wider readership interested in the British Museum.

Examining the secretive dynamics of competing land claims among the Arosi of the island of Makira (Solomon Islands), Michael W. Scott demonstrates the explanatory power of ethnographic attention to the nexus between practice and indigenous theories of being. His focus on the ways in which Arosi understand their matrilineages to be the bearers of discrete categorical essences exclusively emplaced in ancestral territories forms the basis for a timely and accessible rethink of current anthropological representations of Melanesian sociality and opens up new lines of inquiry into the transformative relationships among gendered metaphors of descent, processes of place making, and the indigenization of Christianity. Informed by original historical research and newly documented variants of regionally important mythic traditions, The Severed Snake is a work of multidisciplinary scope that proposes critical and methodological shifts relevant to historians, development professionals, folklorists, and scholars of religion as well as anthropologists. This book is part of the Ritual Studies Monograph Series, edited by Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathern, Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh. Solomon Islanders are eligible for a 30% discount. Please contact Beth Hall at [email protected] or (919) 489-7486 x121 for more information. "Michael Scott''s empirically rich study of the ontological foundations of social action combines the best aspects of classic ethnography and contemporary social theory. His attention to detail registers a keen sensitivity to local concerns and their historical specificity at the same time that his conceptual sophistication places those concerns in a broad comparative perspective. This book is a vindication of careful fieldwork''s unparalleled ability to illuminate the great moral and metaphysical questions." -- Webb Keane, Professor of Anthropology, University of Michigan "I know of no other book on a Melanesian culture that probes as deeply into the question of land and identity. Michael Scott''s book is thoroughly researched, historically aware, sensitive on religion, and always convincing." -- Garry Trompf, Professor of Studies in Religion, University of Sydney "[This book] will be very useful for all academics and tertiary students who seek to understand and do intelligent work among coastal and smaller island cultures in Melanesia... In this he has skilfully combined the disciplines of anthropology, studies in religion, mission history, and missiology." -- Anthropos "This book about Arosi on the island of Makira is welcome on several fronts... Scott presents engaging arguments about the interplay of Melanesian ontologies, place, and practice, and he also makes a valuable contribution to the burgeoning study of indigenous Christianities... Scott does an admirable job of disentangling [the Arosi ideological skein]. His study will greatly interest anthropologists and historians of Melanesia and beyond." -- The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland "The book is an important contribution to Melanesian studies and will quickly enter the canon of mandatory reading for anyone working in Solomon Islands... a sophisticated and well researched study that has much to offer anyone concerned to understand indigenous modes of thinking (and being) in the world today" -- Geoffrey White, Oceania, Volume 78, Number 3, November 2008 "[A] fascinating account of social change. In addition to Melanesianists, this book will be of interest to anthropologists working on issues of personhood, social change, and global Christianity." -- Courtney J. Handman, Anthropological Forum, University of Chicago "This is a major ethnography, whose scope, originality and sophistication combine to set new directions for the comparative study of the societies of Melanesia... This book is indeed a significant contribution to Melanesian ethnography, but it is more than that. It is a major contribution to the comparative understanding of Melanesia within an Austronesian-speaking world." -- James J. Fox, The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, The Australian National University "The ethnography''s main contribution is carefully to detail Arosi conceptions of place and identity that are broadly shared across Melanesia... Scott''s analysis helps clarify why uneasy problems of land and identity in Melanesia continue to simmer." -- The Australian Journal of Anthropology "[T]he book offers a great deal of interest to scholars interested in social change in rural societies, especially where traditional land tenure and resource ownership are in play. It would also find a place in graduate and advanced undergraduate courses on the anthropology of social change." -- Ryan Schram, American Ethnologist, University of California, San Diego "This book offers the reader an excellent, and highly readable, analysis of the Arosi''s understandings of land tenure and Christianity. It offers some very interesting, often critical, insights into current anthropological thinkings on Melanesian ontology and social change... The result is a subtle piece of ethnography... [I]mpressive contribution to the anthropology of Christianity, cosmology, and land tenure systems." -- Michael Wood, Journal of Anthropological Research "The Severed Snake is a work of significance for anthropologists, historians of religion, missiologists, and students of folklore." -- Mary N. MacDonald, Religious Studies Review