The Pacific Islands

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Oceania Newsletter 24, March 2000

THE PACIFIC ISLANDS: ENVIRONMENT AND SOCIETY, edited by Moshe Rapaport. Honolulu: The Bess Press, 1999. ISBN 1-57306-042-9. VI+442 pages, maps, photographs, tables, diagrams, gazetteer, and indexes. US$ 39.95

Reviewed by Ad Borsboom

This book presents a well-structured study of the Pacific Islands as a region. The book is composed of six sections; each divided into a number of related chapters. These sections deal with the subjects of The Physical Environment, The Living Environment, History, Culture, Population and Economy. Each section contains a number of up-to-date 'state of the art' studies which together comprise a rather complete, interdisciplinary overview of current discussions in Pacific Studies.

Throughout the book a number of key themes are emphasised, thus tying together the thirty-three referenced chapters in this volume. These themes concentrate on:

The Environmental Process: various aspects of the islands ecosystems
Social Change: indigenous systems of social organisation and resource management, indigenous identity constructions
Population-resources relations: including emerging industries, but also migration and dependence on foreign aid
The Pacific as a region: various aspects of the region as the world's largest grouping of islands, spanning a third of the Earth's surface

I am impressed by the enterprise Moshe Rapaport as an editor has dared to undertake. He has succeeded in assembling an outstanding group of Pacific scholars to produce a comprehensive survey of contemporary Pacific Islands' research on the subjects mentioned above. The text is enhanced by a great number of maps, photographs, tables, diagrams, an island gazetteer, and indexes. All this makes the volume suitable as a textbook for university courses and all those interested in the Pacific as a region. The book demonstrates the great value of the Study of Regions. As the editor states in his Preface: regions are the best models of the real world, and this is particularly so for the Pacific Islands. The study of this region is one of the oldest and most fundamental themes of scholarly inquiry. Besides the revaluation of place in the social science and humanities it offers a contemporary rationale for the study of regions.

Rapaport's volume is a major scholarly contribution to Pacific Studies that deserves the widest recognition as one of the most comprehensive textbooks available.

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