Pacific Answers To Western Hegemony

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.

he Handbook of Sociocultural Anthropology presents a state of the art overview of the subject - its methodologies, current debates, history and future. It will provide the ultimate source of authoritative, critical descriptions of all the key aspects of the discipline as well as a consideration of the general state of the discipline at a time when there is notable uncertainty about its foundations, composition and direction. Divided into five core sections, the Handbook: examines the changing theoretical and analytical orientations that have led to new ways of carrying out research; presents an analysis of the traditional historical core and how the discipline has changed since 1980; considers the ethnographic regions where work has had the greatest impact on anthropology as a whole; outlines the people and institutions that are the context in which the discipline operates, covering topics from research funding to professional ethics.Bringing together leading international scholars, the Handbook provides a guide to the latest research in social and cultural anthropology. Presenting a systematic overview - and offering a wide range of examples, insights and analysis - it will be an invaluable resource for researchers and students in anthropology as well as cultural and social geography, cultural studies and sociology.

Developing a solid basis for future research and training, this illuminating volume facilitates peace and mutual understanding between people by addressing a root cause of social conflicts: identity constructions. The volume encompasses eight revealing empirical case studies from regions throughout the world, conducted by experts from diverse disciplinary backgrounds. Each case study examines how identities are being constructed and used in the region, how these identities are related to borders and in what ways identity constructions foment peace or conflict. The volume summarizes insights gleaned from these studies and formulates an analytical framework for understanding the role of identity constructions in conflict or peace.

Throughout the Pacific region, people are faced with dramatic changes, often described as processes of “glocalization”; individuals and groups espouse multilayered forms of identity, in which global modes of thinking and doing are embedded in renewed perceptions of local or regional specificities. Consequently, new forms of resistance and resilience – the processes by which communities attempt to regain their original social, political, and economic status and structure after disruption or displacement – emerge. Through case studies from across the Pacific which transcend the conventional “local-global” dichotomy, this volume aims to explore these complex and interwoven phenomena from a new perspective.

Women are significantly underrepresented in politics in the Pacific Islands, given that only one in twenty Pacific parliamentarians are female, compared to one in five globally. A common, but controversial, method of increasing the number of women in politics is the use of gender quotas, or measures designed to ensure a minimum level of women’s representation. In those cases where quotas have been effective, they have managed to change the face of power in previously male-dominated political spheres. How do political actors in the Pacific islands region make sense of the success (or failure) of parliamentary gender quota campaigns? To answer the question, Kerryn Baker explores the workings of four campaigns in the region. In Samoa, the campaign culminated in a “safety net” quota to guarantee a minimum level of representation, set at five female members of Parliament. In Papua New Guinea, between 2007 and 2012 there were successive campaigns for nominated and reserved seats in parliament, without success, although the constitution was amended in 2011 to allow for the possibility of reserved seats for women. In post-conflict Bougainville, women campaigned for reserved seats during the constitution-making process and eventually won three reserved seats in the House of Representatives, as well as one reserved ministerial position. Finally, in the French Pacific territories of New Caledonia, French Polynesia, and Wallis and Futuna, Baker finds that there were campaigns both for and against the implementation of the so-called “parity laws.” Baker argues that the meanings of success in quota campaigns, and related notions of gender and representation, are interpreted by actors through drawing on different traditions, and renegotiating and redefining them according to their goals, pressures, and dilemmas. Broadening the definition of success thus is a key to an understanding of realities of quota campaigns. Pacific Women in Politics is a pathbreaking work that offers an original contribution to gender relations within the Pacific and to contemporary Pacific politics.

In this ground-breaking study M.I. Franklin explores the form and substance of everyday life online from a critical postcolonial perspective. With Internet access and social media uses accelerating in the Global South, in-depth studies of just how non-western communities, at home and living abroad, actually use the Internet and web-based media are still relatively few. This book’s pioneering use of virtual ethnography and mixed method research in this study of a longstanding ‘media diaspora’ incorporates online participant-observation with offline fieldwork to explore how postcolonial diasporas from the south Pacific have been using the Internet since the early ways of the web. Through a critical reconsideration of the work of Michel de Certeau in light of postcolonial and feminist theories, the book provides insights into the practice of everyday life in a global and digital age by non-western participants online and offline. Critical of techno- and media-centric analyses of cyberspatial practices and power hierarchies, Franklin argues that a closer look at the content and communicative styles of these contemporary Pacific traversals suggest other Internet futures. These are visions of social media that can be more hospitable, culturally inclusive and economically equitable than those promulgated by both powerful commercial interests and state actors looking to take charge of the Internet ‘after Web 2.0’. The book will be of interest to students of international politics, media and communications, cultural studies, science and technology studies, anthropology and sociology interested in how successive waves of new media interact with shifting power relations at the intersection of politics, culture, and society.

The texts collected in this volume take an anthropological approach to the variety of contemporary societal problems which confront the peoples of the contemporary South Pacific: religious revival, the sociology of relations between local groups, regions and nation-States, the problem of culture areas, the place of democracy in the transition of States founded on sacred chiefdoms, the role of ceremonial exchanges in a market economy, and so forth. Each chapter presents a society seen from a specific point of view, but always with reference to the issue of collective identity and its confrontation with history and change. The collection thus invites the reader to understand how the inhabitants of these societies seek to affirm both an individual identity and a sense of belonging to the contemporary world. In doing so, it informs the reader about the contemporary realities experienced by the inhabitants of the South Pacific, with a view to contributing to an intercultural dialogue between the reader and these inhabitants.

Government bureaucracies across the globe have become increasingly attuned in recent years to cultural diversity within their populations. Using culture as a category to process people and dispense services, however, can create its own problems and unintended consequences. In No Family Is an Island, a comparative ethnography of Samoan migrants living in the United States and New Zealand, Ilana Gershon investigates how and when the categories "cultural" and "acultural" become relevant for Samoans as they encounter cultural differences in churches, ritual exchanges, welfare offices, and community-based organizations. In both New Zealand and the United States, Samoan migrants are minor minorities in an ethnic constellation dominated by other minority groups. As a result, they often find themselves in contexts where the challenge is not to establish the terms of the debate but to rewrite them. To navigate complicated and often unyielding bureaucracies, they must become skilled in what Gershon calls "reflexive engagement" with the multiple social orders they inhabit. Those who are successful are able to parlay their own cultural expertise (their "Samoanness") into an ability to subtly alter the institutions with which they interact in their everyday lives. Just as the "cultural" is sometimes constrained by the forces exerted by acultural institutions, so too can migrant culture reshape the bureaucracies of their new countries. Theoretically sophisticated yet highly readable, No Family Is an Island contributes significantly to our understanding of the modern immigrant experience of making homes abroad.